Angel: Still Falling
by forbloodysummer
Summary: Angel Season 6, as if the TV show had not been cancelled. Warnings for the whole series: Some violence (possibly describable as graphic), some sex (not remotely graphic) and some strong language (mostly British swearing). Major character death is always a risk when you battle evil each week.
1. Preface, Setup & Warnings (Please Read!)

**Short Version:**

TV shows come to an end. Sometimes, their time has come, their story told, their characters all grown up and wielding scythes and motivational speeches. But sometimes, a story seems to be only just beginning. Angel ended abruptly, only a year after a new lease of life, which, in these authors' opinion, gave the show its strongest year by a mile, and a wealth of new stories to tell. We therefore decided to revive the show, beginning with a sixth season. This isn't slash, and we aren't writing novels – the aim of the project is to produce a season (and maybe more to follow) of written 'episodes' approximating a brand new and hopefully entertaining year of Angel. Much like the televised series, our episodes will not contain individualised content warnings.

When the axe fell on Angel, the Powers That Be decided to end the show in a big way, and the Circle of the Black Thorn plot thoroughly killed, cremated and scattered the premise of the show. For obvious reasons therefore, we are assuming that had cancellation not occurred, season 5 would have ended rather differently. As a result, Angel: Still Falling departs from the on-screen canon with the penultimate scene of Time Bomb. In our universe, The Girl in Question, Power Play and Not Fade Away didn't occur. No Black Thorn, no return for Lindsey, and no destruction of Wolfram & Hart, or, more importantly, Spike's coat. Angel and Nina went on that romantic vacation together, leaving the rest of the gang in charge of the business, and this is where our story kicks off...

Eternally Yours,

 _Out For Bloody Summer_ & _Monotone_

* * *

 **Long Version:**

TV shows come to an end. Sometimes, their time has come, their story told, their characters all grown up and wielding scythes and motivational speeches. But sometimes, a story seems to be only just beginning. _Angel_ ended abruptly, only a year after a new lease of life, which, in these authors' opinion, gave the show its strongest year by a mile, and a wealth of new stories to tell. We therefore decided to revive the show, beginning with a sixth season.

This is intended as an effectively canonical continuation – if you prefer Joss' version, that LA went to Hell, Spike is Lord of Beverly Hills, every character ever seen on the show has shown up at some point, and Dawn is a giant because she lost her virginity, then fair enough, but we think he lost the plot a bit, and that we can do better, or at least give it a shot.

As a result, we are aiming to maintain the same tone as the previous five seasons, but obviously slightly adapted to the new medium. This means the language, sex and violence content will be about the same as the TV show, probably rated 15 (or PG-13 in the US). In keeping with this tone, **Still Falling is not slash.** Relationships will be portrayed just as before, the season will not end with all the characters miraculously paired up, and any romantic liaisons that do occur are unlikely to be the focus of the story.

If any die-hard shippers out there (admittedly, the category I usually fit into) still insist on looking at Still Falling in this way, then all hope is not quite lost, for what it's worth, this promises to be the most complex Sparmony fic ever written.

As for the format, as with seasons 1-5, our season(s) will be divided up into 22 episodes, some stand-alone and some more arc-centric, with each episode likely to be 7-10 thousand words. We will post a new episode every two weeks, working in blocks of 5 or 6 – Once episodes 1-5 have been written, we will release one a fortnight, but not post 6 until 6-10 are all completed.

All comments on both individual episodes and the series as a whole are, of course, more than welcome and would make us very happy, be they critical or complimentary. However, as we want future episodes to remain spoiler-free, and leaving certain leading questions (like "Will Numfar be coming back?" or "How on Earth will Angel be able to get his soul back _this_ time?") unanswered might look rather suspicious, we will not be answering any plot-based questions until the end of the season. Please by all means still leave comments like this, as we like to know what people are thinking, but bear in mind that we will only respond to them once the season has all been posted.

For the same reasons, we will not be posting individual episode warnings – if _A Hole In The World_ carried a label saying 'Warning: Major Character Death Follows!' then it would have ruined the episode completely. So bear in mind that just as with the TV show, no characters are invincible – Buffy died twice in spite of being the title character – and the subject matter certainly has its dark moments, after all, Angel Season 5 opens with a man planting a viral weapon inside his own son, so it won't be all shiny happy people and Gunn singing Gilbert  & Sullivan.

We have also taken to casting actors that we imagine would suit the roles of the new characters we create – this is to make it easier for people to visualise. Obviously, no such aids would be provided with a novel, we considered this the most effective transfer from screen to print. After all, everyone imagines Angel being played by the same actor, it would seem consistent for this trend to be continued with new additions. And yes, we know most of the actors would be far too expensive to ever actually consider appearing in the TV show, but that's one of the nice limits not placed on fanfic, and hey, our special effects budget has gone up too.

It is our firm belief that the Black Thorn mini-arc was placed on the end of Season 5 purely for the purposes of wrapping up the show, and that had the show not been cancelled, the Illyria storyline would have been dragged out for a few more episodes, making 'Time Bomb' the season finale. This is therefore the idea that we have taken as canon, however instead of reworking existing material that audiences are already familiar with, we assume that Season 5 ended with 'Time Bomb' exactly as seen on the show, without additional episodes preceding it.

Our one change to this will be to cut the final scene from 'Time Bomb,' with Angel instructing Gunn to give the baby to the Fell Brethren, as this is clearly the start of the Black Thorn storyline. The episode, and series, therefore ended with Angel telling Wesley that Illyria 'might just make the team yet.'

As a result of disallowing the Black Thorn plot (no 'The Girl In Question,' 'Power Play' or 'Not Fade Away'), a number of things have changed for the start of Season 6. To begin with, Wesley, Hamilton, Drogyn and Lindsey are not dead. Neither are Archduke Sebasis, who we've only met once (in 'The Life Of The Party'), Cyrus Vail, Senator Bruckner or any of the other Black Thorn members. Not only that, but we don't know that they are members of the Circle Of The Black Thorn. In fact, we don't even know it exists.

Furthermore, Spike did _not_ give the line about 'well, except that one time,' Fred's parents do not know about her death, Andrew's sexuality was never confirmed either way, and Buffy, who is in Rome, may or may not be dating The Immortal, who may or may not exist. Hamilton never beat Illyria to a bloody pulp or kidnapped Drogyn. Angel never spent his last day helping Connor fill out a resumé, and Spike never recited his effulgent poem. Unless, of course, he did that sometime since and didn't tell anyone. The important character points are that Illyria never imitated Fred, and therefore never fell out with Wesley, nor did they get their moment of closure before she showed up at the Hyperion alley. Also, crucially, Harmony never betrayed anyone, nor was there any suggestion that she is going to. Angel and Nina are still together, Drogyn is still in his cave in England, and the Wolfram  & Hart building is still intact. Most importantly of all, Spike's coat is just fine.

 _Out For Bloody Summer_ & _Monotone_

* * *

 **Retrospective Version:**

The above was written sometime in 2008 or 2009, by myself and my best friend. Not much has been written since then. Five episodes were completed, totalling about 44,000 words, along with another 10,000 words of partially-completed episodes and a ridiculous amount of notes. All 22 episodes were plotted out, some in more detail than others, containing both episodic storylines and series arcs we thought were interesting. I'd love to get the whole thing finished one day, but that's very unlikely to ever happen.

Unfortunately, despite the hundreds of hours poured into it, the project buckled under its own weight. We had decided to publish the episodes in batches of five, so that the audience would not be left hanging indefinitely, but finishing the fifth episode of the first block turned out to be such a slog. It wasn't that we disliked it or went off the show (though we did slowly grow more distant from it), it was just a struggle to find time to do any of it, when its time requirement was obviously so huge. We both remain very proud of the episodes that we did complete, though it is a bit obvious that episodes two, three and four were written after one and five, and the quality jumps accordingly. I would be very interested to hear what others think of our work.

Also, all of this was previously published on Livejournal, which now seems to be a bit of a graveyard for internet traffic. I'm now uploading them here in case any Whedonites online in 2015 are interested in reading them. However, doesn't allow embedding, as far as I can see, which makes the layout much cleaner, but does mean that readers miss out on the painstakingly-created title card for each episode, as well as the video title sequence (which is different for each episode). So to see Still Falling as it was originally intended, even just to see each episode's image and video and then return here, try .com


	2. 601: Reflections

"Spike, you do not need an office!"

The tension was thick in the conference room, and tempers were beginning to fray. Wesley was on the verge of rising from his seat, barely keeping his anger in check, and Gunn's frustration was clearly evident on his face. Spike kept his cool though, mainly because he knew it would infuriate them even more, something that never ceased to amuse him. The weird thing was the great blue fairy, who usually remained indifferent or absent in these discussions, but this time Spike could have sworn he occasionally caught the faint twinges of a smile playing around the corner of her mouth. Hell, maybe they had more in common than the strong urge to punch things every now and again.

The stupid thing was that it was only half nine in the sodding morning, the sunlight streaming harmlessly through the necro-tempered miracle glass, and already they were at each others' throats. Ok, so half nine was late for him, and he was somewhat at an advantage when it came to throats being in close proximity. Yet all the same, it seemed early in principle, and that left him doubly agitated. It appeared obvious to him, of course; Mr Forehead was away, so he, as the only other ensouled vampire in the building (and on the whole bloody planet), should be left in charge. But no. Couldn't leave Spike in charge now, could we? We might end up coming back from the Bahamas to find the house had burned down, after all. Spike absently cast his mind back to all the times he really had left houses burned down, and his resulting fond smile did little to appease the former Watcher.

"Damn right I do," he snapped back at them, "'m tired of all that hero Spartan existence bollocks, I think it's about time I got somewhere decent to hang my hat. Anyway, you've all got one, I'm meant to be part of the team now, remember?"

He could just move into Angel's office, he supposed. The poof wouldn't be back for a good few days, should be plenty of time to change the locks, chuck out the Rat Pack albums, and shag the secretary. Admittedly, he had a habit of doing that anyway, but that wasn't the point. He was about to voice this aloud when Gunn responded, cutting off whatever Head Boy had been going to say.

"Just give him an office, Wes, we're hardly short of space, and it'll shut him up for a couple of hours."

Wyndham-Price held his tongue, holding his ground for a few moments, then hanging his head in despair, and shaking it in acquiescence. Spike, in an unusual moment of sensibility, a sure sign he didn't drink enough these days, decided to stay quiet, to not gloat and rub it in their faces as he normally would.

He glanced around again. Illyria sat beside him as if carved from stone, but he thought he still caught an air of amusement from her, something he was sure the others had missed. Gunn and Wes sat on the other side of the conference table facing them, Gunn in his usual baggy trousers and t-shirt, orange today, busily scanning his list in front of him of the various things they were meant to be discussing during the meeting, and had been before the argument about the office. The other wore a non-descript dark purplish shirt and corduroy trousers, with the top button undone and no tie, and seemed to be regaining his composure, ready to move on. Spike, as usual, couldn't resist.

"How come Angel gets an executive holiday, anyway?"

Wesley gave him a withering look, and droned his response, repeated for at least the thirtieth time in the last week.

"Because he is the CEO, and he works and sleeps solidly inside this building. The same reason he has a helicopter, the same reason he gets paid more than us, and the same reason he's the one who has to answer to the Senior Partners."

"Not out of pity over the no sex thing he's got going on?"

Completely ignoring Spike, Wesley smiled at Gunn and Illyria before addressing them.

"Charles, what, according to the agenda, are we supposed to be discussing?"

Charlie boy scanned the paper on the table in front of him, pursing his lips when he reached a point half way down.

"Two client meetings, one involving a piskari demon accused of statutory rape, the other allegations of goat theft. Our competition from New York is stepping up the heat on the Winson case, it'd really help if we could get a definitive answer on the blood spattering. Clearly I've got some preparation to do, they've set the court date for the Foxwold case, you know, the trans-dimensional immigration one?"

Spike drifted off, entirely bored by the day-to-day proceedings at Wolfram & Hart. All his life he had heard men talk of how the years rushed by, but he had never quite known what they meant. He lived every day exactly as he wanted, savouring every moment and all that. Yet now he could almost relate to them, the tedium of the nine to five routine was beginning to get to him, waking up and going to work at the same time every day, and he could easily see a decade passing in the time it took him to turn around.

Reaching down beside his seat, he thumbed open the catches on his briefcase. Yeah, he had a briefcase. A black leather one, no less. And if he stayed here long enough, it might even contain proper briefcase stuff, perish the thought. As he scrabbled around inside it trying to find something, his hand passed four cans of lager, his clipboard, a pair of sai, and finally reached the thing he was after, a copy of the morning paper.

Wesley was of course openly critical when Spike pulled out the paper and began flicking through it in the middle of the meeting, and Spike hardly bothered denying that causing mild irritation was a large part of his reason for doing so.

"Just checking the headlines," he said without looking up. "Seemed easier than having some of our guys keep an eye on him."

Those across the table met his eyes with confused expressions, completely lost and clearly expecting an explanation. Spike sighed and started to respond, when Illyria spoke up.

"He speaks of your leader. He checks for reports of the violence that would occur if his true self emerged."

"You think Angel's gonna turn evil on us again?" Gunn asked, surprised and just a little defensive, while the Watcher raised his eyebrow at Illyria enquiringly.

"I heard him asking the blonde one about the cost of hiring men to observe the half-breed," she admitted, oddly demurely, fixing a glare on Harmony through the glass office walls to indicate who she meant by 'the blonde one.' Harm, as usual, saw her watching and ducked slightly lower behind her desk.

"I'm not saying a romantic getaway with wolf girl will make him go the whole 12 black rainbows, but it's not like it hasn't happened before. Better safe than screwed, I reckon."

And besides, he had to do _something_ , and this beat listening in meetings about stuff he had no idea about. He wasn't really set up for this whole legal angle, in fact he'd spent his entire unlife on the other side of the fence. So it was keeping a probably-unnecessary eye on his grandsire, or doing completely sod-all. The little green man had gone for the latter, and Spike didn't want to end up like him. It still wasn't quite right without Lorne, the mood tended to be much too serious, but the man had been right about one thing, he'd had no place here. Well, he'd been right about it being corrupting, soul-destroying and evil too, but as far as Spike was concerned it was still far less torturous than a karaoke bar, or wherever the Hell Lorne was now.

The others had gone back to discussing the new cases, dropping the subject of his keeping tabs on Angel. If he'd been paying attention, he might even have caught the slight nod of approval from Wesley. Spike was still lost in his thoughts, reflecting on how much death surrounded them.

He and Captain Forehead were both dead, that was a given, but with Lorne gone, the whole place seemed dead. Fred was dead, and as a result, Wes might as well have been. In the not-too-distant past, Gunn enjoyed the delights of a gruesome death on a daily basis, and Illyria was, well, not dead, but not chirping with positive energy either. Unfortunately Harmony was, pretty much overruling her technically being dead too, but as soon as the subject of unicorns came up, which happened at least every two hours, Spike started wishing she'd bitten the bullet a bit more permanently. The place had been livened up briefly by Cordelia's reappearance, only to find out that she had been dead all along, which seemed almost typical of life at Wolfram & Hart. _Everyone I love is dead. Or they think I am. Bollocks._

* * *

(Still Falling Title Sequence, well worth watching, viewable here: Youtube URL / watch?v=gjAdY07xnVk)

What kind of moron would cross a couple of acres of parkland, complete with several shadowy clusters of trees and bushes, at one in the morning? Spike pondered over the question as he ran, leaping a small bush, quickly gaining ground on his quarry. Unfortunately, so was the competition, the reason for the screams that had dragged him away from his quiet walk home. It had been a long, useless day, and he didn't begrudge the call to action too much, it was something he could actually do, without having to consider it from every sodding angle before making his move, only to then have it criticised by the former Watcher.

The other pursuer was rapidly closing the distance, and Spike sprinted for all he was worth. He was too late though. The other guy, a big, hulking guy, with speed belied by his appearance, leaped at the fleeing aforementioned moron, and brought him bodily to the ground, scrambling quickly on top to sink fangs into his neck. Spike dived on top of them, but not before the other vamp had reared up sharply, clutching his head in agony. Very shaken, Spike completely missed the pair, landing on his front and skidding across the grass beside them. He instantly rolled over and jumped up, but knew he needn't have bothered. He'd recognise that reaction anywhere, the blinding flash of pain, and he knew the vamp was no longer a threat.

What he didn't know was how the Hell a vampire in LA, probably an American Football player from the look of him, the stupid pansy, got a chip stuck in his head. The guy couldn't have been older than 20, and certainly hadn't been in the game long. Spike didn't recognise him at all from his time in that sterile white Hellhole, and he was sure he'd known all the other demons there, by sight at least. Which could only mean…

"Run!" he barked at the skinnier man, sprawled on the ground, who then wriggled his way out from beneath the massive vamp and pegged it. Spike got slowly up and strolled over to the ponce still writhing on the ground, holding his head and moaning.

"I know a man in Africa who can stop the pain," Spike told him, standing over him. The sorry loser couldn't have looked more pitiful if he tried, and Spike's heart went out to him. It would have done, at least, if it worked, and if the guy wasn't clearly a right wanker. But his situation? That, Spike had sympathy for. He crouched down on one knee over the vamp and continued.

"'Course, comes at a high price, bit more than your usual pack of Aspirin. But he can make the pain in your head go away _." It comes back stronger in other places._ "Think the soul might be a bit out of your price range, mate. Luckily I know a handy alternative treatment."

Long before the other could react, Spike whipped out a stake and slammed it through his chest. He turned his head to avoid his eyes being filled with dust, but he caught a glint as something small and metallic fell to the ground. Running his fingers through the newly-formed pile of pale dust, he stopped when he felt something solid, fishing it out and holding it up in front of him.

Though the moon was mostly obscured in cloud that night, enough light showed to reflect clearly off the coin-sized metal object. He could do nothing but stare at it, his eyes trying to bore holes in it, and he became absently aware of a low, feral, growl from somewhere near by, and realised a moment later that it came from his own throat. Wanting nothing more but to crush the hated chip, he instead tucked it away in his coat pocket.

"Done you a favour," he told the pile of dust, "and saved you a truck load of misery."

He stood up, turned around and headed off, quickly checking that that evening's victim was nowhere in sight. You're welcome, he thought, but he wasn't convinced the pleasantry had been aimed at the human.

* * *

The next day, Spike arrived at Wolfram & Hart carrying a box. Due to his sleepiness at the time, it had taken him most of the day to remember, but he was sure that the previous morning the others had agreed to let him have an office. And so he had brought with him a box of random keepsakes, the sort of thing he imagined an executive would fill their office with, pictures of their kids and cars, golf trophies and the like. Only, Spike had none of those, so he had improvised.

One advantage of the sewer entrance was that it was open all hours, so that creatures of the night like he could work on a more comfortable timescale. It was bizarre walking past Harm's desk with her not there, with no one walking around the rest of the lobby, and Angel's office empty. But Spike did what had to be done, and if getting into work at seven was what it took, that was exactly what he did. Only once, though, he thought it fair to say he was not a morning person.

He didn't remember ever seeing the guy who had the office next door to Brooding Misery's, but Spike hoped that he wasn't massive, with a history of violence. Though at this company, that wasn't unlikely. It was just that his office looked good, and having his working space this close to Angel was likely to be very entertaining. The office door was of course unlocked, and Spike snuck inside, closing the door behind him in case anyone else decided an early start was called for.

His stealth was short lived, as the next second he tripped over a box of files on the floor, tumbling arse over tit, his own box going flying in the process. He might have let out a disappointingly unmanly exclamation of surprise, which he tried to cover with a good deal of swearing when he hit the floor. He picked himself up and stayed quiet for a few seconds, listening for any reactions to his outburst. It was likely he was the only person on the entire floor, so he was probably safe.

He turned away and bent down to rescue the former contents of his box when he took in the rest of the room. The carpet was barely visible, as the floor was covered in boxes and papers. Most boxes were missing their lids, revealing more files inside. The desk was also covered in several layers of official-looking papers. He was just beginning to wonder whether the office's former occupant had been inexplicably unorganised, or if a bomb or vortex or something had turned the place upside down, when the door opened a few inches, and he spun around to face it.

"Harmony?!" he exclaimed, as her head popped 'round the door.

"Blondie b… How come you're in here? And why are you here so early? You usually don't show up 'til, like, one, or something."

She stepped fully into the room, and Spike was granted a full view of her outfit, which, somewhat predictably, was a pale pink. Well, her skirt and jacket were, her top was a deeper pink. All in all, Spike was reminded of a chewing gum ad he saw recently. Though the advert hadn't featured as much cleavage, or quite such a pretty girl. Or that much cleavage.

"Oi! I get in long before one. Mostly. Sometimes. How come you're here at this ungodly hour, anyway?"

"Oh, Angel asked me to come in early while he was away," she said with a slight shrug. "He said if I could get stuff organised early, it'd run more smoothly for the others trying to fill in for him."

She shrugged again and smiled, then looked around at the chaotic office. Spike knelt down and began picking his stuff up from the floor, glancing up at her frequently.

"And does it?"

Harm looked thoughtful, which Spike found a little bit funny, but also rather sweet. He continued refilling his box of random things, which was oddly pointless since he meant to unload the stuff in this room anyway.

"I guess. I mean, no one really tells me either way, so I wouldn't know for sure."

"So," he responded, now standing up and setting his box down on the cluttered desk, "you're here two hours before everyone else, working to make their day go better, and they don't even say thank you for it?"

When she nodded reluctantly, he raised his eyebrow sharply at her, and continued in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Ever thought of not doing it?"

Harmony considered it, and Spike set about finding homes for the various things in his box. He took out a pair of broadswords, they'd have to be crossed on the wall behind his chair to make his desk look more imposing. _How the Hell do they actually attach these things to the walls?_

"Well, he's kinda the boss, he'd probably shout at me or something. I mean, he'd shout at me anyway, but…"

"Give it a try. Bet the others don't even know it's you that prepares all this stuff, so they won't know who's given it a miss this time around. And if it gets back to the boss, you said yourself, he'd find something to get worked up about anyway. The man just isn't happy if he's happy…"

Oh, she had probably totally ruined her chenille jacket and her dry-cleaner would kill her, but for once in her life she wasn't going to complain about that. Well, she would later, but not now. Now was the time of fuzzy and warm and, balls, she'd have to get dressed again and go back to her desk in, like, ten minutes. Now she remembered why it had taken so long to leave him in the first place, why it was only when she saw him there with Buffy and Drongo, or whatever her name had been, that she'd finally had enough.

And then, last time she'd been this close to him, she'd got possessed by, uh, no idea what by actually, but her eyes had started bleeding and she'd tried to bite him, and Spike had punched her. That had really hurt, too. Not really in, like, a physical, actual hurty way, but one of those deep, emotional things.

"Harm? Can I jump on your computer for a couple of minutes later?"

 _My computer?_ But the boss would probably see and then ask her why he was there and why she wasn't working and then he'd flip at her and, _Ooh, Angel isn't here!_ In that case, it was no problem, but anyway, why would he want to use it?

"No problem. But anyway, why would you want to use it?"

"Need to print out a photo of Buffy from Facebook."

 _Asshole!_ How could he still be thinking about the Slayer, with herself lying so close to him? After what they had just done together? _Oh my God, was he thinking about her the whole time?_ Harmony had also forgotten what a total bastard Spike could be sometimes. Spike caught her look of daggers, and explained slightly, but only made it worse.

"Gonna put it in the empty frame on the desk, beside the signed one of Johnny Rotten where he spelled his name wrong."

Harmony snapped and started hitting him with all the force she could muster. Since she was lying on the floor with no clothes on, that wasn't actually a lot of force, and it came out as a volley of very weak slaps which he easily batted away.

"Spike," she ground out between blows, in a voice so cold she was rather proud of it, "why would you want a photo of the Slayer?"

He started laughing, which only made her more furious, and he had to shield himself with a raised elbow as she tried to slap him as many times as she possibly could.

"Because," he said between snorts of laughter, "it would _really_ piss off Angel."

She certainly hadn't been expecting that as a reply, though the he and the boss were always bitching about each other. She stopped trying to hit Spike, instead deciding to pout at him.

"Couldn't you just have a picture of me instead?"

"Harm, the office walls are glass. If I look up from my desk, I can see you for real."

 _It'd be nice all the same_ … Spike sat up and started scrabbling around for his clothes. Was it really time to get dressed already? Working sucked. Although, she wasn't wearing a watch, and couldn't see a clock anywhere, could he be leaving early?

"Got a meeting to get to," he said when she looked up at him questioningly, which sounded like an exit strategy to her.

"Have you really? Or are you just making excuses to get rid of me?"

Spike, having now found and put on most of his clothes, bent down to pick up his trenchcoat, shrugged it on, looked down at her, and seemed almost to sigh a little.

"I'm not lying to you. A, I don't care that much," he said pointedly, starting to count reasons on his fingers in front of her, "B, the meeting is in the next room, and C, you were the one that told me about it in the first place."

He turned and headed out for the exit, half turning and waving to her as he went through the door, and closed it behind him. Harmony was left alone in the silent office, which now looked even more of a bombsite than it had been to begin with. _Probably time to put some clothes on…_

* * *

The white-haired one raised his voice too often, she noted irritably. It disturbed her from her musings, something few others had ever dared considering, yet he offered no apology, in fact he did not even seem to realise he was bothering her. So there she sat, bothered. She had once told Wesley that she was only bothered because she was bothered, but now it rankled even deeper than then. Now, not only was she bothered, but she was accepting it, not responding, not grinding them beneath her heel as they grovelled for pardon. 'Progress,' the humans would have called it.

She did not think of it so. Progress was the conquering of valuable territories and the vanquishing of multi-phasic rivals, these humans knew nothing of world domination or the way things should be. They knew very little at all. And yet they were all she had. Inevitably, this was the conclusion she reached with every chain of conscious thought, which did nothing to ease her disposition.

"…You cannot allow them to control a demon against its will!"

The half-breed was very close to shouting, and his words gained her attention. He was arguing with the dark-skinned one, sitting across the table from him, defending his position with strong hand movements, but not yet raising his voice as animatedly.

"Way I see it, bunch of vamps running around LA unable to bite people, no biggie."

A screeching filled the air as the vampire pushed his chair out from the desk, and though the others did not flinch, they clearly felt pain at the sound.

"You don't know what it's like," he said firmly, standing up and drawing his animalhide skin around him, "to be powerless to defend yourself."

The human also pushed back his chair and stood, but much more smoothly and without sound. He leaned over the desk on his fists and spoke in a low, controlled manner.

"I know _exactly_ what that's like. And as I recall, it was _because_ of all those uncontrolled demons."

"Bit different when it's your own body that's being held in check, when you're helpless against those you once fed upon, living among the cattle."

"Yeah, and as you put it like that, I rest my case."

The half-breed did not reply immediately, visibly shaking from the effort of not doing so, and Illyria smelled the delectable aroma of imminent violence. After a few seconds of intense standoff, he shook his head, muttered "Sod this," turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

It was true that most demons bars looked remarkably similar, but all the same, he missed seeing Willie behind the bar _. I wonder where he got to in the end?_ There Spike sat, the Blue Princess of Hell beside him, drinks on the table in front of him, on the hunt for information. They'd found nothing so far, which meant that this time around, the Initiative were being a lot more subtle. Hell, maybe they'd even gone so far as to employ soldiers who weren't college students.

"It is regrettable that Wesley would not assist you in your quest. His methods are not as tiresome."

He gave her a cool look, taking a deep swig from his pint before replying.

"Nothing tiresome about sitting in a pub. 'Sides, you said you'd never been to one before."

Now it was her turn to fix him with a look, in her case filled with impatience and contempt.

"And now I have visited nine. This one provides no more of use than its predecessors. I was hopeful that your retreat into your office after you sharply left the conference room had been in search of reference texts, yet you carry none."

"Nah, just had to set my voicemail, to say I'm out of the office."

Ok, the look she now gave him was impressive, conveying a scarily high level of scorn. Hmmmm. And he'd thought she was warming to him.

"You halted your quest for justice and vengeance for this detail of pointless politeness?"

"Yeah, well, trying to look professional and all that," he snapped in defence.

It wasn't like she'd ever understand, of course, but he could sort of see why she was disparaging of it. He probably would have been himself, not too long ago. But then, since Angel got made CEO, and since the poof went on holiday and left the rest of them in charge for a bit, Spike had come to appreciate the power behind being at the top of the corporate ladder. Of course! What he needed was a secretary!

"And these tossers are a modern military outfit, doubt the ancient books have much to say about them," he pointed out.

Of all the enemies from his past that could have reared their often-ugly heads in LA, it had to be the one likely to have access to more firepower than Wolfram & Hart. Not the pissed off son of a slayer, not Sorvad or the Countess or even that bloody ponce Dracula, but the sodding Initiative. _Or Dru…_

He'd not heard anything from Drusilla since the last time she'd come back to Sunnydale, but he thought she was in South America. And he desperately hoped she stayed there. He knew if he ever saw her again, now he had his soul back he really shouldn't be attracted to someone that had caused, and continued to cause, that much suffering. He knew he'd have to warn her to stay away, and drive a stake through her heart if she refused. But he also knew that he wouldn't be able to keep his hands off of her, that he'd fall straight back in love all over again. He was a bad, bad man.

"Whaddaya know, it does provide some use," he told Illyria, taking in what he had been absently watching while lost in his thoughts. She cocked her head on one side, as if examining him, and he clarified quietly.

"The vamp up there at the bar, the one in the brown leather jacket, he's buying bags of blood from the bartender. What self-respecting creature of the night would pay for blood when he could get it from the source on the moonlit streets of LA?"

She looked around at the guy in question, and for a brief moment Spike thought about warning her not to look or draw attention to themselves, but then realised the hassle he would have explaining to her why that would be a bad thing, and thought better of it.

At the bar, the vamp noticed her watching and immediately turned away, heading for the door. Illyria got up to follow, leaving Spike to down the remainder of his pint, and then, after getting up and making it half way across the room, returning to their table to finish hers.

By the time he had got outside, Blue already had the guy pinned up against the wall by his neck, his feet lifted several inches above the ground. Subtlety really wasn't in that girl's vocabulary, he noted with a smile. He came to stand behind her left shoulder, hands in his pockets, looking up at her captive with a bored expression.

"Now, what's an able-bodied vampire, that'd be you, doing buying blood over the counter?"

"Screw you, man," spat the vamp as he tried to kick out at Illyria as hard as he possibly could. When she didn't even flinch, his shoulders slumped a little. As much as shoulders could slump, that was, when being held up by the throat. He really was just a kid, couldn't be any older than 20, and had only been turned within the last few months.

"Ugh, I don't have time for this. I'm a busy man, you know, things to kill, evil government scientists to put a stop to…"

Exactly as predicted, the kid looked up at this, and the suspicion on his face was soon thrown to the wind in favour of hope. Just a bit more encouragement, and he'd spill the beans and show them where to go. And then they really could get on with the killing and scientist stopping part.

"Just tell me where they are," Spike pushed, managing to keep himself from sounding too hostile. He laid a hand on Illyria's shoulder, letting her know to relax a bit and put the guy down, wondering if she'd do it, or if she'd turn and punch him.

The vamp's feet touched the floor, and he leaned forwards, clutching his throat. The Blue Meanie stayed within arm's reach, ready to lash out if she deemed it necessary.

"I don't know anything," he said miserably. He kept his head down, but snatched wary glances up at the pair of them from time to time.

"I was out one night, a couple of blocks from here, trying to feed, when I got zapped from behind. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in a gutter with this thing in my head."

Though vampires were able to keep up with the rapid movement of others of their kind, as he swept in Spike doubted the kid knew what hit him when he was grabbed and held against the wall again, this time by the front of his coat.

"Not good enough," Spike snarled, his face barely two inches from the other's. Illyria remained still, looking only mildly interested, which seemed to unnerve the kid even more.

"We're gonna lay a trap for them," he continued to growl, "in fact, we're gonna spring one of theirs. So all you need to do is point yourself in the direction of where you were caught, and run like Hell."

"Huh?"

Being met with a blank look, Spike chose that moment to pull the young vamp away from the wall and wave his arm out, emphatically gesturing to start running. When this still did not come to pass, he turned to Illyria.

"Would you mind?"

In one single movement she had closed in, shifted her weight and swung her arm out wide, catching the kid's jaw with the back of her fist. There was a delicious crunch of bone, and a body flying at least fifteen feet backwards. Having been on the receiving end of several of those in the training room, Spike grimaced slightly in sympathy. _No time for that now though_ , he thought as his fangs descended and he roared into the night.

"I said _run_!"

* * *

They had barely been going five minutes when the blast came. The jolt of electricity hit him from behind, just like before, every bit as unpleasant as last time. With the stress of his captivity and then the chip and all, he'd forgotten how nasty the actual blast had been. He had no doubt that Illyria, from her rooftop vantage point, had seen everything, he only hoped she didn't try to interfere, if she acted now she'd annihilate their only lead. Then a curious thing happened; Spike fell to the ground and the world went black.

* * *

You wake up in a cell. Not a pristine white cell like last time, this one is more of a plain room from a small flat, but still definitely a cell. Though the furniture looks wooden, the door is clearly steel, as are the bars over its head-height window. You nervously reach up to the top of your head and run your fingers through your hair. It's ok, a little ruffled, but nothing shaved or sliced, they haven't cut open your skull again yet.

Remarkably, he'd managed to avoid a headache from that jumped-up taser blast, he didn't think he'd been so lucky last time. Although, that might have been because of the surgery they'd performed before he'd even regained consciousness, and if they hadn't tried that this time around, they'd either changed their policies, or they recognised him and wanted to interrogate him first. Or there was a queue.

He wasn't too worried about them trying to put another chip in him, he thought as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, feet dangling off the edge of the bed. One of the nice things about Wolfram & Hart was that they would be able to remove it, and certainly would want to. After all, having him scientifically unable to kill any of the good guys would make achieving their corruptive agendas far more awkward.

He continued to muse on the subject for a while, and was still doing so when he realised he was being watched. Though he wasn't facing the door, he could feel that someone was looking in on him through its barred window. A brief look around showed an unsurprising lack of anything he could sensibly use as a weapon, and so he simply turned his head and regarded his observer coolly.

A woman, the scent had told him that much before he had even looked, but he could now see her to be around thirty years old, with dark eyes and slightly wavy blonde hair, stretching out of sight below the window frame that was level with her shoulders. She was quite a pretty thing, but didn't stand out immediately as the 'bite me' kind. Though he couldn't see the size of her heels, she appeared to be just above average height.

"Can I help you?" he drawled at her, and she seemed slightly taken aback.

"The idea is for that to be the other way around here, we help you."

His eyebrow arched entirely of its own accord, and he barely suppressed a snigger. He turned slightly to face her more head on, pulling one leg up onto the bed.

"Come on, tell me you're too smart to really believe that. I know what it is you lot do here. I wouldn't call it helping me."

At that, she did snort a little, and he was treated to a sardonic smile, before she ruefully raised her eyebrows, accepting his point and responding.

"Better than the alternative, isn't it? And it's true, we're more focused on helping normal people, those who don't kill and drink blood for a living."

"And still we're not even living," he finished for her. "Does that make it easier?"

Again she smiled, and again he wasn't too reassured.

"I sleep soundly enough. We're full to overflowing here, but by the time we're done we'll have cleaned up the streets, made them safe again."

The chick really did seem to believe that, and Spike admitted to himself that she did have a point, in spite of the naïve, or at least uncaring, mindset.

"Yeah, but at what cost? By taking away the ability to decide how to act?"

She appeared indignant, but for a split second, she had to think about it. Spike smiled, at least he wasn't completely wasting his time.

"I've yet to meet a vampire who decides to act any differently to feeding and killing," she told him pointedly.

"You're looking at one, pet."

She gave him a withering look, followed by a do-you-think-I'm-stupid one.

"When we caught you, there was a young man running for his life."

"Should've looked closer. Wasn't a man. In fact, think you 'helped' him recently."

She let out a quiet sigh and looked down for a few seconds, Spike had a feeling she was playing with her nails. She looked up again, her head tilted on one side, giving her half smile a malicious edge.

"Somehow, I don't believe you. Though I am intrigued by some of the things you had on you when you were caught. What would a vampire be doing with several wooden stakes?"

"Oh, them. Tools of the trade."

Interest, confusion and disbelief flittered across her face, and so he clarified.

"Judean Peoples' Front business. You know, suicide squad."

She managed to contain any snorts of laughter or further upwards twitching at the corners of her mouth, but couldn't keep the amusement out of her voice.

"Is that so?"

Spike nodded and looked away, grinning at the position she'd manoeuvred him into.

"Sod it, I'm stuck now… You don't believe the truth or the lie, so I don't really know what to tell you."

He looked back at her and caught her smile, which carried the disdain he'd expected, but also a trace of warmth. And woah, she was pretty damn cute. Right, time to put a name to a face.

"So what do they call you around here?"

"My name is Dr Bowman," she said after a second. "And you?"

"Well, if we're going with titles… call me William The Bloody."

* * *

She had left a short time later, something about duty calling, leaving Spike on his own to enjoy the pleasures of his isolation. It wasn't all bad, here there was no one telling him what to do, no lawyer stuff to make him feel out of his depth and guarantee a longing for the good old days. Unfortunately though, there was only so long he could spend sitting silently in a darkened room without feeling like Angel.

He heard footsteps approaching outside and looked up to the door. A face appeared at the window there, that of a bird older than the last, at least mid-40s, still good looking but clearly overworked, the bags under her blue eyes giving her an exhausted look. She had dark hair cut off at the shoulder, only slightly tinged with grey, and like his last visitor she wore a white lab coat. What was obvious, however, was that she was the girl in charge of the place.

"I'm beginning to think you people get paid to talk to the prisoners."

"We do," she replied. She had a strong voice, but it was gentle, almost motherly, and the compassion in her face echoed this.

"We try to maintain a caring atmosphere," she continued, "a comfortable air, so our patients may feel as at home as possible."

Spike smirked, twitching his eyebrows in interest.

"Of course, clearly we're patients now, not captives at all."

"Absolutely. We've reached the age where technology can allow humans and demons to coexist peacefully, that's all we're trying to facilitate here."

She went quiet, and he looked intensely sceptical.

"A few years ago there was a place like this a couple of hours upstate, they were big on the demon experimentation. It got out of hand, and everybody died. The one escapee was already dead."

She looked regretful, he assumed with regard to all the death, but couldn't quite rule out that she was mourning the demon experimentation going tits up. Suddenly her face hardened, and lost all of its former kindness.

"But you already knew that, didn't you, Spike?"

He froze, having been studying the bed sheets while she talked, and looked up at her sideways-on. _Wasn't expecting that. Guess they kept records after all_. Well, she knew now, no point in hiding it. Spike got to his feet and spread his arms wide in a mock bow.

"Hostile Seventeen, at your service."

She looked him up and down in an appraising fashion, and he couldn't help being slightly disappointed with himself when he felt the goose pimples raising on the back of his neck.

"Now that's exactly what I mean," she said crisply. "Every patient here keeps their name, and if they're here longer than one night, we bother to learn what it is."

"Still not really feeling the love," he muttered.

"No. But vampires aren't really known for love, are they? Take this city's body count of roughly 29 victims a night, for example."

"Well, a vamp's gotta eat, and pigs' blood raises the cholesterol, you know."

"The feeding, I accept, is natural," she said with a grimace. "What I object to is the innate cruelty vampires display. In the last three months, 19 bodies of young girls have been found, tortured beyond recognition, but clearly vampire work. Many were under fifteen."

Spike was quiet for a moment, as there wasn't a lot he could say to that. He soon found, though, he could only maintain the silence for so long before speaking up to defend himself.

"If you'd actually done any research, or, you know, asked, you'd know that I spent a century, most of my damned existence, madly in love with someone." _Or at least, in love with someone mad._ "So don't tell me about love. It's something I know an awful lot about."

 _Far too bloody much about, in fact._

At the door, she nodded slightly, clearly still convinced she was absolutely right, but lacking the necessary comeback. She turned and headed off down the corridor, and he leapt up and rushed to the door to call out after her. This close, he could hear a tiny hum from the door frame, and having not seen any keyholes or bolts, would put money on the locks being electromagnetic.

"Doctor," he called after her, and she stopped and looked back at him.

"It's Matron, actually," she told him sternly, "Matron Fisher."

She didn't really smile, it was more of a slightly calculating look he received, and he swallowed before replying.

"If you're really so big on this mi-casa-es-su-casa thing, do I get my one phone call?"

"Gotta call anyone in particular?" She sounded intrigued, but not interested.

"My mother," he sneered. The Matron considered it for a few seconds, then thankfully relented and said she would send along a guard to escort him there.

* * *

"Good evening. This is Spike, acting CEO of Wolfram & Hart. I'd like to make an acquisition. I want the firm to purchase all the assets of the LA Initiative Complex, my scary colleague with the blue hair should have given you the location. Once you have it all, kill the power and completely shut the place down."

* * *

It took slightly longer than he expected. He had a feeling that the acquisitions department might have done some checking around first, making sure he really did have that authority. He did, pretty much. It was true that _technically_ the four of them were meant to be collectively in charge while Forehead was away, but one advantage of being the only nocturnal one was that everyone else was blissfully asleep while he was out, which gave him complete control for eight hours a day. Eight hours a night.

After fifteen minutes or so though, it happened. The lights in his cell flickered and died, and shouts of alarm echoed down the hallway outside. There were crashes and bouts of commotion, and the shouts quickly turned to cries of horror and pain as the electromagnetic door locks shut down, bringing to mind certain scenes from Jurassic Park. _Right then, time to check out._ Spike stood, stretched upwards and felt the individual joints in his back clicking in turn. Then he made his way to the door, having no trouble seeing in the pitch black, opened it and headed out.

There was no light in the corridor either, and shapes of various sizes, most growling unpleasantly, were scurrying around here and there. The corridor was wider than he had realised, at least the width of his cell again, but didn't stretch that far lengthways, having only twenty or so cells on each side. He started walking, choosing the direction both his visitors had taken after leaving his cell, and was nearing the end of the corridor when a vamp came running around the corner and crashed straight into him.

"That's a really nice coat," Spike said admiringly as he took in the other's appearance, wrapping his arms around himself and wishing he had his own. The vamp looked taken aback, even more surprised when Spike punched him hard in the nose and slammed his head against the wall. Spike pulled the coat off the dazed vampire, finishing the job by snapping his neck.

Git, he thought as he whipped it around and onto him, feeling its familiar weight, _this_ is _my coat_. The stakes in his pocket were just where he left them, he took one in each hand and set to work, following his nose deeper into the complex. Well, actually, mostly following the screams.

He swung at demons he passed, sinking stakes into vampires and letting nothing get past him. He lamented not bringing a broadsword with him, he had been growing used to the reassuring weight of carrying one, but it hardly would have been subtle. _And I forgot._

As he pulled the head off a chaos demon, he rounded the corner and burst into what must have been the operating chamber, where it appeared that the human scientists were making a last stand against the forces of darkness. The emergency power must have been working in there, as the ceiling lights glowed fitfully and flickered, at times plunging the room into total darkness again. The floor was strewn with bodies and bloodied white lab coats. He recognised the form of Matron Fisher staring up at him with lifeless eyes, her chest pierced several times.

The humans had turned over several tables, forming a crude and mostly ineffective barricade, against which a wall of demons snapped and clawed, often drawing blood and screams from those behind it trying to repel them. He leapt in and tore at the demons from behind, staking some and throwing others away from the barrier, then turning to fight them.

In the midst of the battle, he knew the human numbers were dropping, the heartbeats he could hear were down to just three. It was at that point that the wall on one side of the room blasted inwards, filling the air with dust. The fighting continued, and Spike felt in his skin the human pulses diminishing to two. From the hole in the wall came violence itself, knocking demons flying across the room and bringing gargling sounds from them that made even him shiver. With the ongoing fighting, the dust did not so much settle as thin out, and Spike recognised the new form, a blue-haired whirlwind of destruction. _Violence herself_ , he thought with a smirk.

"Got my back?" he asked, deciding a brief lull in the demon tide she had offered would be a good time to jump in and rescue the humans on the other side of the barricade. She looked at him quizzically, and as he turned away from her to look for the best way past the barrier, he felt her hands grasp the back of his jacket, one level with his shoulders, the other his waist. Before he could respond, she had picked him up and hurled him high over the barricade, meeting the wall on the other side in a distinctly unpleasant fashion.

"Not quite what I had in mind," he managed to choke out, shaking his head clear and pushing himself to his feet. He stumbled around to find the two humans, one of which was lying on the floor, the other crouched over him. His ears told him the one on the floor was dying, nearly gone, and his eyes told him it was due to a couple of nasty claw wounds to his abdomen.

"Time to go, pet," he called to her, swooping in beside her and slipping his arms around her waist, lifting her up trying to pull her away, but she was having none of it.

"He's dying!" she shouted hoarsely, scrambling away from him and back towards her comrade, desperately trying to apply pressure and stop the bleeding, but to no avail.

"In less than a minute, he'll be dead, and you with him," he snapped, "unless we go _right now_."

Whether or not that would have convinced her they would never know, for at that moment the barricade broke, and a heavyset piar demon and two vampires landed on top of them.

* * *

"The Slayer and the First – they were wrong."

The voice cut through the strange dreams and pools of black that filled her mind when her eyes were closed. The voice was not terribly familiar, but she had heard it before. The accent was that of the rough end of London, England, but the careful cadences it formed suggested an expensive education, not the characteristically harsh speech that Hollywood too often tried to copy. Though she could smell a saturation of years of nicotine and tobacco, the voice lacked the gravely tendencies usually displayed by a long-term smoker.

She felt weightless, and she felt like she weighed a thousand tons, both at the same time. She was floating, lying back, supported below her shoulders and behind her knees, but she felt the floor might buckle under her weight and drag her into the depths below. Tentatively, she tried opening her eyes.

"It's not about power. Power is a 'how.' The more important matter is 'why.'"

A figure towered over her, dressed all in black, but with shining white hair, and he was carrying her out of the light, into the darkness of a long corridor. He seemed to move incredibly slowly, his footsteps seemed so far apart, the noise somehow distant, each movement almost frozen in the air. Occasionally she caught the odd flash of movement, shadows flittering around in the dark. There were faint noises that echoed forever, wails and cries of things that could not possibly be human.

"When you get right down to it, it's about choice."

He glanced down at her as they moved – as he walked – and in the flickering light, she saw his face. It was firm, but still gentle, like the way he held her, and his eyes seemed far too wise for his age, which could not be more than 25. But as she puzzled with that, her memory steadily became clearer. There was no shock revelation, no moment of fright, but she became aware of what he was, of who he was, and of who he said he was.

"See, these demons can choose to be good, like me, or to be bad," he told her, then flashed her a grin showing his pearly whites and added "like me."

She thought that ordinarily she would have felt a tremor of fear at that, but was currently too dazed to react properly. She hadn't really considered the free choice angle before, and it was true that the work of the Initiative would definitely be considered a violation of human rights. But the subjects weren't human, raising the question of did a demon have rights? And since a human had a right to life, and the demons seemed bent on undoing that, did they forfeit their own rights through their behaviour if those did exist?

"They can choose to end the world if they bloody well please – they'll have to take the consequences that come with it…" he warned, breaking off unexpectedly to rapidly shift her weight and sling her over his shoulder. Her head was hanging upside down resting on his back, pressing against a sea of battered black leather. She felt him adjust his balance as his hand slipped into his pocket, then again for a quick burst of energy, followed by the noise of two vampires exploding into dust.

Turning her head, she could see another monster following them, one she didn't recognise. It wore a scab-red armoured jumpsuit, made of what looked like leather again, but deflected swords with ease, and as it flailed around pummelling other demons with shocking strength, she noticed blue streaks in its hair. It caught her eye, its own massive irises a pale shade of blue, and this time her blood did run cold at the sight. The entrails it was forcefully removing from another demon may have had something to do with that.

She wanted to cry out, to warn her rescuer to watch out, but as she was drawing breath to do so, the creature straightened and fell into step beside them, keeping a watchful eye on them and holding the other demons at bay.

"…But, they still have the right to make that choice."

Before transferring her back to a cradling position, they passed the polished steel columns that marked the entrance to the compound. She could have been mistaken, it was only for a split second as they passed, but she could have sworn she saw his reflection.

* * *

They were standing on the edge of the rooftop, looking down on the disguised entrance to the Initiative Complex, slightly further down the street from them on the other side. Spike guessed the time to be about half three in the morning, too early for most of the city, though taxis glided past from time to time. The wind was not strong, but the open rooftop left them very exposed to the elements, and he could feel the breeze in his hair, very glad to have his jacket back.

"I don't think we're gonna see any, not after this long. I guess you got them all."

Though her voice did not falter, she spoke quietly, and he guessed she was still shaken, but trying to hide it. As for whether there were any stragglers yet to emerge from the complex, he wasn't so certain, and wouldn't have minded staying a while longer to make sure of it.

"I left no survivors," Blue's voice carried to them from a few feet away, where she was busy looking up at the stars, "but I like the rooftop."

They all fell quiet at that, partly lost in their thoughts, and partly not feeling up to arguing with the God-King. Not that the other girl knew about Illyria's divine past, but it was generally accepted that blue hair and a penchant for ultra-violence was a combination best not disagreed with. Perhaps some introductions were in order, in case the poor girl thought they were from a weird branch of the A Team obsessed with leather and hair dye.

"So, Dr Bowman, what will you do now?"

She looked at him and hesitated for a second, glancing over at Blue and then down at the entrance they had been keeping an eye on.

"It's Coral," she said, "just Coral now."

Taking in her tone, not broken, but subdued and lost, he added more companionship to his own before responding.

"Spike," he told her, "and the stargazer over there is Illyria."

When she didn't respond, but continued to look out over the illuminated cityscape, he carried on.

"We're from a company called Wolfram & Hart."

Though she met his eyes for a second, she showed no hint of recognition at the name. _Not from around here, clearly. Well, that might make this a little easier, not having our reputation to work against._

"You're clearly pretty up on the demon science mojo," he observed, _and have already been working at one demon-obsessed firm with highly questionable morals. And based on that…_

"We'd like to offer you a job."

* * *

Billy sat on the bed, his knees drawn up before him and his hands crossed around his ankles. He was rocking backwards and forwards slightly, staring at the blank wall in front of him, lost in his thoughts and desperately looking for the way out. The guy with the peroxide had been right, an able-bodied vampire had no place _paying_ for blood. He was useless, he was crippled and unable to feed himself or fend for himself. The two of them had proven that, threatening him, striking him, and then chasing him through the streets. And with the things he had done, the lows he had gone to begging for food, he knew he was at rock bottom.

The bottom was supposed to be the point where he turned his unlife around, when he saw the light and started the long climb towards it. As he at last lifted his gaze from the wall, he found he could indeed see the light, the glow behind the red curtains in his room, the sunlight creeping in at the edges. His face stiffening in resolve, he got up, and he headed over to the window. He took a deep breath, and then burst out laughing, realising how unnecessary breathing was. He opened the curtains and took one last look at the world, still laughing as he realised that after rock bottom, he had managed to find his way back to the light. His last thought was of how easy it had been.

* * *

6.01: Reflections, of Angel: Still Falling, written by Out For Bloody Summer and edited by Monotone, is original work copyright 2009. Please seek permission from the authors before distributing, and only do so on the condition that the original text and this notice are intact and no charge or fee of any description is levied for it. "Angel" and all related properties are trademarks of and copyright 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Telecision, and David Greenwalt Productions. The authors are not connected in any way with the copyright owners. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by this non-commercial exercise. All characters and events depicted here are entirely ficticious, which is probably a good thing. Hope you enjoyed the show, all comments welcome, but please see the extended setup blog for our policies on replying. Join us next time for Episode 2.


	3. 602: The Wolves, My Love, Will Come

First night back in Los Angeles. He had a feeling that when normal people got back from holiday, they found they'd missed their friends, their families, their favourite chairs and TV shows. But after two weeks away, Angel found the thing he had missed most was roaming the streets alone at night, helping the hopeless, knowing he was doing all he could to make the world a slightly better place. _And if I work hard enough each night, I might just undo all the damage I cause during the day._

It wasn't that he regretted taking over Wolfram & Hart in LA. He had done at first, he still had serious doubts about it from time to time, but generally he was sold on the idea, it had been the best move. Whether it had been the right move, well, that was debatable, but he was through with debating for the time being. It was his first day back at the office tomorrow, he probably should have gone in today, but he figured since he'd eventually decided the guys could do without him for a couple of weeks, one more day wouldn't make too much difference, so he'd spent the day with Nina and then dropped her home himself. Besides, knowing the hours they kept, it was quite possible that the office wouldn't be deserted when he went up to his suite to retire for the night.

Angel was snapped out of his reverie by screams from nearby. He burst into a run, following the screams, and rounded the nearest corner into the mouth of an alley. In the middle stood a very tall, heavyset man with his arms wrapped tightly around a young blonde girl, dimly illuminated by an ageing floodlight a little further down. She was screaming, her eyes casting frantically all around the alley, and his head, obscured by hers, appeared to be buried in her neck. Without slowing or hesitating, Angel leaped at the pair, bringing them both bodily to the ground, rolling to pull the big guy away from the girl, who was still screaming. Before the man had a chance to react, Angel altered his balance slightly on the ground and swung a fist, catching the guy straight in the jaw. He managed to get in two more before the other rolled far enough away to get to his feet, slowly, but not _that_ slowly.

Angel leaped up and pressed his advantage, closing in, the girl screaming even louder, almost at him directly, it seemed, and he lunged in again to attack with his fists. He grabbed his opponent with both hands by the collar of his t-shirt, pulling him close to look him right in the eye. Unfortunately, at that point the girl grabbed hold of his upper arm, and he turned to look down at her.

It was as his eyes met hers that he knew he'd made a mistake. He scarcely had time to turn back to the assailant when the fist struck the side of his face. He'd been hit by vampires often enough, even by Illyria once or twice, and though this guy didn't have any of their supernatural strength, he was horribly strong for a human. Angel felt more than heard the click of his jaw dislocating, and was driven back a step from the impact.

 _Ow! That really hurt!_ He looked up, and found the big guy was between him and the girl, blocking his access. His face was grim, and he looked ready to punch again if necessary, but he wasn't coming any closer. Angel was about to ask the girl why she had stopped him, when he realised that the three of them weren't alone. He turned quickly, hoping the attacker didn't change his mind about not advancing, and took in the scene.

The light from behind them fell short of the mouth of the alley by which Angel had entered, but beyond its range he saw several large shadows moving at waist height, shadows with eyes reflecting in the dark, of green, of blue, and gold. Though there was blood pounding in his head from the adrenaline of the fight, he could just hear the collective breathing of several large dogs. As they slunk closer, coming towards the light, he could see them more clearly, and realised they were not dogs, but wolves. The lead one growled warningly, and Angel corrected himself again. _Werewolves_.

There were at least twelve of them, and this wasn't one of the times he'd thought to bring a sword. He had a couple of stakes, but not the wrist-mounted retractable ones, since he hadn't swung by the office yet. That left him at a bit of a loss, he could fight them, but he had a nasty feeling that would end with the girl being eaten, and perhaps himself as well.

The lone growl became a chorus, and he glanced around nervously. He spotted a dumpster nearby, and a fire escape above it he could reach with a particularly good jump. That left just two problems; the heavyset man between himself and the girl, and the fact that the werewolves would pounce the second he moved. As it was, with them drawing closer, his time was rapidly running out.

He checked the air very carefully, and then again just to make sure. A vampiric sense of smell was all very well, but vampires retained their eyesight for a reason, their noses weren't _that_ good, and Angel wished his plan didn't involve going on his nose alone.

Fixing in his mind exactly where his nose told him the dark-haired man was, Angel dived towards him, only turning his head in mid air so as not to give away his intentions beforehand. For the second time in as many minutes, the two bodies collided firmly and crashed to the ground. Angel was ready, though, using his momentum to continue into a roll, springing to his feet entirely in one motion.

He heard the rabid barking of the werewolves as they pounced, covering the distance faster than even he'd expected. With both hands, he picked up the girl by the waist, and lifted her quickly on top of the dumpster. He leaped up himself, and took a wild jump at the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder suspended above him. _Must be my lucky night,_ he thought as his hand closed around the metal bar, and he pulled himself up, bounding up several rungs.

He hooked his legs through the bottom bars and let go with his hands, dropping backwards to hang upside down from his legs, extending both arms out downwards to try to reach the girl. Their fingertips met, but he couldn't get low enough to get a grip strong enough to pull her up.

Several of the wolves were snapping their jaws, barking up at them, surrounding the dumpster, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl's would-be mugger trying to hold two of them off with an iron bar. The girl kept jumping up, trying to reach, but Angel couldn't quite get the grip he needed.

And then suddenly the large, dark-haired man was there again, clambering quickly onto the dumpster beside the girl and lifting her up by the waist. With that boost, Angel easily pulled her up, guiding her hands onto the lower rungs, with which she soon dragged herself further up the ladder, halting above him and looking down. He saw the terrified-with-concern look in her eye, and more importantly saw that it wasn't aimed at him.

Realising he might have misjudged the situation a bit when he entered the alley, and having a sneaking suspicion of what the correct assessment should have been, he extended his hands downwards again to grasp those of the man below, whose grip was just as firm as Angel had been expecting, and who rapidly clambered over him, following the girl further up.

Both helpless victims now reasonably safe, unless werewolves had learned to climb ladders, Angel pulled himself back the right way up and followed the other two upwards. The wolves continued to fill the alley with angry barking, snapping their jaws and desperately trying to leap onto the dumpster, but to no avail.

When he reached the top of the ladder and the various metal fire escape stairways that followed, he stepped out onto the roof, and was greeted by the his two rescuees in each others' arms, much as he had first found them, only without the screaming, and he now recognised it firmly as an embrace of love, rather than attempted violence.

"He's your boyfriend?" he asked sceptically, and though facing both of them, effectively addressing the girl. It was the man who responded though, lifting his head and fixing dark eyes on Angel with a scowl.

"I'm cuddly on the inside," he spat, and though slightly taken aback, Angel found that rather difficult to believe.

"They have your scent," Angel told them, "they'll surround the building, and won't let you leave intact."

The man looked as if to reply, but instead went back to concentrating on his girlfriend, making sure she was alright. While Angel pulled out his cell phone and dialled a number, he noticed that she was checking her man over as well, fussing over various gashes on his legs and chest.

The strange noises these modern cellular phones made trying to imitate real telephones told him that it was ringing, and a brisk voice soon answered. Angel had never really done this by phone before, he didn't know quite what reaction he'd get. But, he was the CEO, after all, so in theory he was the boss of whoever answered.

"Er, yeah," he began, "Angel here. I'm gonna need a helicopter extraction from a rooftop downtown…"

* * *

(Still Falling Title Sequence, different from last episode, viewable here: Youtube URL / watch?v=UFBs2iYUrzQ)

"What's with Beauty and the Beast out there in the lobby?"

Spike sauntered in as usual, this time only twelve minutes late, and dropped into his chair near the other end of the conference table.

"Never mind them, would you mind telling me what's with you hiring new staff?"

Angel, sitting in his normal spot at the head of the table, gestured to the blonde lady, sitting half way down on the left. He gave her a slight smile to let her know that it was Spike he was irate with, not the lady herself. Coral, Illyria had called her, and had sat by her side the whole time, curiously protective. Wes and Gunn sat opposite them, clearly just as puzzled as he.

"Noticed we had a vacancy," he drawled, "shortfall in the science department, remember?"

"It's true," Gunn pointed out after a moment, glancing across at Illyria, "Big Blue here might look like Fred, but she was sleeping when they invented science, and she can't work an iPod."

"And I did shoot her assistant," Wes added, looking to him as Gunn also had.

Coral looked up at him sharply, clearly alarmed, but Spike leaned forward quickly and placed a reassuring hand on her arm.

"Trust me, he had it coming," he told her, then looked across to Angel, clearly awaiting his decision on the matter of bringing her onto the team. Angel found himself looking frantically to any of the others for help, not knowing what to say, but they all deferred to him.

"Uh, are you, erm, qualified for the position?"

Though she didn't look nervous, he got the impression she wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, but spoke up after only brief hesitation.

"I have a postdoctoral qualification in medicinal chemistry, and nine years of experience as a military research scientist, including a fair bit of hands-on practice. But no one's really told me what the position is, or what the job entails…"

Both he and Gunn took that as a cue to glare at Spike, who at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

"Dropped you in it a bit here, sorry 'bout that," he said to Coral as he turned to her, 'fraid I'm about to do it again though."

His face lost the smile and took on a resolved look as he got to his feet, with that battered jacket he insisted on always wearing hanging almost to the floor.

"Blue?"

At that, Illyria too got up, then she turned around and left the room without a word. Spike moved to follow her, drawing startled looks from the others and a demand from Angel to know what was going on. Angel couldn't help wondering if Spike would have otherwise left with no explanation at all, just as Illyria had done.

"Well, Illyria decided that she didn't want to work for Wolfram & Hart, because she remembers them as being far beneath her."

Angel snorted and rolled his eyes. _Was there anyone she didn't see that way?_

"And it got me thinking;" the blond continued, "actually, I'm not too happy about working for you, so we came up with a better way of doing it."

Angel raised his eyebrows and looked sceptical, waiting for Spike to finish his pronouncement.

"Thought we'd form our own company, one for dealing with just the fighting, and leave all this pansy legal stuff to you lot."

"A rogue demon hunter," Wes mused appreciatively, "I can see the appeal."

"Power trip went to your head," Gunn chipped in, "knew you were enjoying playing top dog a bit much while the boss was away."

Spike grinned at him, and then smirked at Angel, who knew he still looked unconvinced, before elaborating.

"You'd still get our considerable expertise, at a slightly discounted rate, but we get to be our own bosses, and can decline jobs if we choose."

Over the last couple of years Angel had gradually come to terms with Spike having a soul. The part that grated, as ever, was his ego.

"We're a huge company," he sternly told the flippant vampire, "we have access to plenty of our own wet teams. Why would I send you to fight my battles?"

He appeared to consider it for a moment, then offered his mock-enthusiastic reply.

"Personal touch?"

With that he strode out of the room, and the door swung shut behind him. A shocked silence lasted for a couple of seconds, ended when Gunn cleared his throat and turned to Coral.

"So, you work the demon mojo, huh?"

Before Coral could respond, they were interrupted by the door bursting open and Spike walking back in, stopping just past the door and drawing all eyes once again.

"Oh, and Wesley, could you sort me out a secretary?"

The former watcher managed to look surprised and indignant at the same time, spluttering a protest that earned him an oh-for-goodness-sake-just-do-me-a-favour-and-get-it-done look from Spike. Wes shook his head in long-suffering despair, giving in with a sigh.

"I know just the person."

The blond vampire gave a smile that looked quite genuine, and a nod of thanks.

"Make sure she's got, you know, a nice personality and that," he said, mouthing 'good tits' and illustrating with his hands before walking out of the door.

"He makes me want to hurt people," Angel commented to no one in particular, and though the rest of the room remained speechless following Spike's exit, several heads turned to stare at him, shocked and horrified.

"Ok, not a good thing to say," he muttered just loud enough for them to hear, hoping that would do as an apology. _Way to start off on the wrong foot with the new girl…_ Realising that he'd just thought of Coral as the latest addition to their team, he thought maybe he should double check before jumping to conclusions.

"So, Coral, you're a demon scientist?"

Brought back to the matter at hand, she glanced quickly across the others at the table and nodded.

"Not in the sense of a scientist who is a demon," she quickly clarified, and her eyes flicked sideways to Illyria's empty seat and back, "but I've studied them, yes."

He nodded reassuringly, not quite sure what else he should do, but trying not to patronise her. Thankfully Gunn spoke up, as Angel hadn't had a clue what to ask next.

"So how did Spike run into you? I don't think he knows how to place an ad, and you don't look the type for a strip joint."

"Err, thanks," she said with a slight frown, then paused to consider how to respond.

"Well," she began, "I only met him a couple of days ago, he turned loose some captive demons and let them slaughter my former employers."

After another pause, she asked, "Does he do that a lot?"

They all thought back for a second, before Angel answered, "No, I… I think that's the first time."

Sparing him again, Wes stepped in, speaking up in a kind tone, addressing all three of them.

"Perhaps I should show miss Bowman around, give her the grand tour and answer questions on the way."

"That sounds like a good plan," he announced, then looked to Coral, who nodded in acceptance.

They both stood, then he led her out of the room with the line, "My name is Wesley Wyndham-Price, I'll be your tour guide for the day…"

Angel and Gunn watched them go, suddenly alone in the big room.

"Could you see those two…?" Angel asked, to which Gunn raised his eyebrows and shook his head wistfully.

"Bit early to tell, wouldn't you say? At the moment, Wes is still falling apart over Fred."

Angel shrugged and continued to gaze out of the door, wondering what to do about Wesley. Time was the best healer for these things, but after the deaths of Wes' past two girlfriends, time just might drive him crazy. Crazier, in fact. His obsession with Illyria seemed to be fading, he had taken the opportunity of her bonding more closely with Spike to distance himself a little. Angel was snapped out of his thoughts by Gunn turning to him and resuming their conversation from before Spike had arrived.

"We've still got a serious problem on our hands with those two you picked up last night, you know."

Angel's brow furrowed, yet again he had done what he had believed was obviously the right thing, only to find that the company he was supposed to be in charge of thought differently.

"I was trying to help them. They were in trouble. We still do that, don't we?"

Gunn gave him a patient look, and Angel wondered how the man was feeling about their position at Wolfram & Hart. When they first arrived, he'd been enthusiastic, and his newfound intellect had thrived on the legal battles, applying the same principles to their struggles outside the courtroom and encouraging compromises Angel wasn't too happy about.

But after Fred's death, and his brief stay in a Hell dimension, he had completely changed his attitude, preferring to remain as only the muscle in their operation, and avoid his pinstripe suit and encyclopaedic legal knowledge like the plague. From the sound of it, that reserve was fading again.

"Look, it's complicated, you're involving us protecting them as a company, we have to make sure we have sufficient grounds to do that."

The man had a point, but Angel didn't like it.

"Fine," he snapped, "they don't like it, they can sue me."

"They have!" Gunn immediately shot back at him, taking a breath and letting some of the tension drain before adding, "the summons arrived this morning."

* * *

Again, Angel was in his usual seat in the conference room, and again he found himself longing for a simple answer, preferably involving killing all the bad guys. Only this time, he had to explain it to two people he had saved the night before, of how the situation wasn't quite as clear cut as it seemed. As expected, he felt very uncomfortable, and hated every minute of it. They were such nice people, well, one of them was, anyway, and he felt guilty just telling them that their safety might not be quite as easily achievable as he had thought.

"They're suing you?"

Her voice was worried, but also compassionate. The boyfriend, meanwhile, mostly kept quiet and scowled, though he did hold her hand in her lap reassuringly, Angel noticed.

"So it would seem," he admitted, though his eyes flicked sideways to Gunn, who smiled ruefully and nodded. The girl, Rose, nodded, looking away and thinking it over, but the guy, Ed, unexpectedly spoke up, filling the room with a deep, gravely voice.

"And what happens now?"

Angel, for the umpteenth time today finding himself unsure of how to respond, looked to Gunn again. It was perhaps more acceptable this time, though, as legal issues tended to be the other man's field.

"Well, the debate revolves around whether we, Wolfram & Hart, have legal grounds to offer you protection," Gunn told them.

"They were trying to kill us," Rose protested, "I thought that was pretty clear to everyone involved. Isn't that enough?"

He and Gunn smiled at her, both wishing that were the case. He wasn't too clear on the specifics, but his colleague obviously had a fair idea, so Angel left the explaining to him.

"The crime of murder, technically, is one human being intentionally killing another. And since the guys after you aren't really human, that gives them a loophole."

The couple nodded, one showing surprise, the other a cynical 'I might have known' expression. After a pause of a few seconds, Rose spoke up, her tone shrewd.

"They're gonna stand up in court, and claim not to be human? They'll get laughed off."

"Not in court," Angel told her, remembering the details Gunn had given him before meeting with the pair of them, "in the Pantheon."

Though Ed and Rose seemed polar opposites, the eyebrows they raised at him in response were identical, and he began to understand their bond. The name of the place, unfortunately, was about all Gunn had had time to tell him, before they'd been scheduled for the meeting, so again Angel turned to him for further explanation.

"Demon court," he said simply. "Established a dozen millennia ago in the hope of giving demons a better name. They figured if the demons could mete out their own justice, maybe the Slayer line would back off a bit."

A knock came at the door, and Harmony stepped inside, her scarlet skirt, jacket and heels bringing a burst of colour to the room.

"These are the files Wes asked me to bring you, boss," she said as she laid two of the Wolfram & Hart reference templates out on the table in front of them, finishing by asking, "Who's the new girl he's showing 'round?"

"Coral," Gunn supplied, "hopefully the new science-head."

"Oh," Harmony said with a look of understanding, hovering for reasons Angel couldn't work out, before adding, "she seemed nice. Though she really should sort out her split ends."

"Harmony…" Angel began, but she'd been getting better at taking hints, and was already heading out of the room.

"So this is them, huh?" Gunn said as he skimmed over the templates, "the Crimson Hunt. Ah, no, the Hunt is what they're here for, the wolves themselves aren't identified by name."

"Says this hunt is a worldwide thing, and any werewolf can take part, which makes it very difficult to escape from," Angel observed. "I guess you two must be the jackpot."

"Lucky us," Rose said with a grimace. "Can we hope for a rollover?"

 _If I have anything to do with it_ , Angel thought. Gunn looked at them sympathetically, but also with an air of helplessness. Ed and Rose themselves looked apprehensive, yet resilient, unwilling to give up without a fight.

"We'll get our top man on it," Angel said, his eyes flicking to Gunn again. The dark man's eyes widened, and for a brief moment, fear showed on his face.

"Angel, could I have a word with you please?"

Angel met his eyes, still full of worry, but also stubbornness.

"Of course," he said, turning to their clients, "would you excuse us for a minute?"

Gunn had risen from his seat and now walked towards the other end of the room, so Angel got up to follow.

"Do you want to tell me what this is about?" he asked, trying to keep the irritation over the interruption out of his voice.

"I've never represented in the Pantheon before," Gunn said quietly, "I've read about it, but never set foot inside it. You'd be much better off with one of our other lawyers, someone with more experience in that field."

Giving him a calculating look, Angel judged his response very carefully. He couldn't be too gentle or too harsh, Gunn needed just the right level of encouragement.

"The first time you represented in a human court, you did it without hesitation, and you were superb."

Gunn rolled his eyes and gave him a grateful but impatient look.

"It's not quite the same here, and I really don't think I'm the man for the job."

Angel folded his arms in front of him, and let out a long breath.

"Look, we both know your reluctance has nothing to do with the nature of the court environment."

"Fine," Gunn snapped, throwing up his hands in frustration, but still keeping his voice low. "I remember what happened the last time I got involved with this stuff, and I won't let it happen again."

Adding a little more compassion into the look Angel gave him, he then forced it away and made his voice hard.

"Fred's dead, Charles, and whatever bit of your wardrobe you exercise," he said, running his eyes over Gunn's grey hoodie, "it won't bring her back."

"I won't let them hurt anyone else because of me," came the swift response, not bothering with keeping his voice lowered.

"You paid a heavy price for this gift," Angel growled, "so did Fred. The least you can do is use it."

Gunn chose not to respond with words, but the tension was treacle-thick between them, standing not more than a foot apart, neither of them willing to break eye contact. Ed's low voice sharply cut the silence after a few moments.

"You never answered my question. What happens now?"

Slowly, they both turned to him, but Angel remained silent, awaiting Gunn's decision and hoping he'd make the right one.

"Now," he said, keeping his eyes on the floor before looking up at them, "I see them in court."

* * *

In spite of the automated air conditioning systems throughout the building, despite the additional filters needed for that particular department, the air in the main science lab still seemed stale to Wesley as he opened the door and led Coral inside. It wasn't just that the labs had been quiet since they had finished studying Illyria, it was knowing that Fred was never going to smile down at him from her office window again, and he would not be sharing secrets with her on the floor while intoxicated.

How long would it take for the air in here to smell fresh again? How soon would he walk in here expecting to see the face of the woman next to him, rather than the one he could still picture perfectly looking at him from across the lab?

"And this, as you can see, is our main lab," he advised her, waving his hand around to draw attention to certain features.

He stood back, allowing her to take a long look around. Oddly enough, he was reminded of the way Illyria had first studied the lab recently after her arrival, only Coral showed more apprehension.

"Something the matter?" he asked, catching the look on her face.

"This," she said, placing her hand on a large piece of equipment, covered in dials, and likely worth a small fortune, before continuing, "I don't know what it does. I couldn't even tell you what it's called."

He looked away for a moment, remembering seeing Fred using that very machine. He hadn't known what it did back then either, but she had, she and her knack for figuring these things out. A smile touched his lips at the thought, one that would not diminish in the face of her being gone, because she had remained brilliant to the end. And none of them had a hope without her.

"Nor do I," he confided, "but I'd imagine we could summon the instruction manual on one of the templates sometime, if you'd like."

She smiled, but clearly her worries were not allayed.

"Where's everyone else? Wouldn't they know? Or do I have to run this enormous lab all by myself?"

Wesley frowned, and he tried to remember what had led to the absence of lab technicians.

"There were others, they all went off to…" he trailed off, then met her eyes and finished his sentence, "I have absolutely no idea where they went."

He stepped closer, reasoning that in a lab this size, staying back near the doorway to let her explore on her own was only likely to make the experience more intimidating. They slowly walked around the lab, with him pointing out various bits he could remember the names of. They were mostly the bits so simple she'd been using them since her school years, but it was the best he could manage at short notice. A few minutes later, she stopped in front of an expensive black piece of equipment with several lenses and LCD monitors, that he had a feeling Fred had once called an Ion Microscope.

"I'm a chemist," she told him dejectedly, "I don't know a thing about half of this stuff."

"You're all we've got," he said sympathetically, but resolutely announced, "so you'll have to do."

She remained clearly unconvinced, but focused on his exact words instead, her eyebrow raising in both curiosity and sarcastic gratitude.

"Well Jesus, you sure know the way to a woman's heart."

He turned away from her slightly, so she could still see his face, but he was free to fix his eyes somewhere in the middle distance, encapsulated by the memories playing before them.

"The last time I checked," he said dreamily, "it was straight through her ribcage."

* * *

 _Really not a bad office we've got here_ , he thought to himself as he rearranged his desk for the twenty-third time, positioning the lamp on the right, dragging the pencil pot forwards, and straightening up the various documents again. Across the room, the Blue fairy was inspecting the walls with almost scientific precision.

"This location would be best for the weapons cabinet," she said after a long while, her voice filling the large, sparse room.

He looked up, taking in the spot she had picked at one end of the room, a fair distance from any of the windows, and easily accessible when pinned down behind her desk. He had a really good feeling about this new partnership they had formed, of all the people he had met here in LA, Illyria was the closest he had found to a kindred spirit. And between the two of them, their existing reputations ought to bring them to public attention quickly enough.

"Looks good to me," he confirmed, and she turned and headed out of the room. She walked in that determined, focused way that he had seen her display more of as she grew used to her human body, and presumably she went to find someone who would build her the weapons chest she desired. He'd have to sort out the contents for it, he supposed; a couple of broadswords each, a selection of axes, some sai, perhaps combat knives, and a good supply of stakes. _Would be nice if we could get something bigger, too_. Bit of firepower never hurt anyone, after all. Well, it did, but that was mostly what it was there for.

* * *

"Objection, your honour," Gunn interrupted, his pulse racing like it hadn't done in months, only hoping that the sweat patches weren't visible on his robe.

"The prosecution suggests that the defendants and their species exist as cattle, however cattle are bred specifically for the purpose of slaughter, I must insist that human beings are not."

The judge, who looked remarkably human himself, nodded, and they both looked over at the lawyer for the prosecution, the most qualified of the six werewolves that were behind the whole thing. The man shot him a brief glare, and then turning to the front of the court and responding.

"I was insinuating," he said slyly, his undisguised Russian accent adding a tone to his delivery Gunn found rather menacing, "that Human Race is pest, whose numbers must be controlled. As this is way in nature, so should it be in supernature."

The judge motioned for the prosecutor to continue, who began a slow walk back and forth across the Pantheon floor.

"Humans breed constantly, population grows always larger. We prefer to hunt moderately to keep numbers down than large-scale cull each century."

The prosecutor halted, regarding the jury carefully. His beard and moustache, black, but flecked with grey, did nothing to reduce the animal nature of his appearance, despite of the navy blue robe he wore.

"Your race," he said, turning to Gunn, "has ravaged land with war and cutting down forests, destroyed seas with pollution and much fishing, and poisoned air with factory and motorcar. Is there anyone in room," he asked, spreading his arms, "who can think of single positive thing that human race has done for any other species?"

* * *

A knock came at the office door, which was strange, because Spike didn't know anyone who would knock. Puzzled, he considered who had thought it sensible to give an office glass walls, yet a solid door, the one bit he might like to look through. With luck his visitor would be the secretary he had asked for; Harmony had warned him that the Watcher had already arranged it.

"Come in," he called, without looking up from his desk.

He heard the door open and someone step into the room, a young woman, judging from the sound of her heels. Still fretting on his list over the same line as he had been considering for the last ten minutes, he pushed the paper aside and looked up, taking the girl in at a glance. Thin build, medium height, glossy brown hair, blue eyes, cream-coloured skirt and jacket combination, similar to Harm's but more tasteful, with a pastel blue blouse. It was only then, after focusing on her face, that he realised he knew the girl, and quickly got to his feet.

"Dawn!"

She was smiling, and though she looked drastically different to how he remembered her, the smile remained the same. The eyebrow she raised at him along with it was distinctly more adult, but still a wonderful thing, as he knew exactly who she'd learned it from.

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Not quite sure how to respond, he instead rushed around his desk and pulled her into a fierce bear hug. She smelled of a light touch of expensive perfume, Italian, he would have guessed, even if he hadn't known where she'd spent the last year. After a minute he slowly released her and took a step back.

"Is that strictly legal?" she asked.

"I, erm, wasn't aware California had imposed an age of consent for hugging," he mumbled. "But all the same, you're old enough to do that now, right?"

She gave him a flat look, and he shot her an expression of mock hurt and surprised indignation.

"I mean since you're now my employer, wouldn't that behaviour count as sexual harassment?"

"Ah no, we're not gonna bother with any of those silly rules here," he replied, before pausing and reprocessing exactly what she'd just said.

"I'm your employer?" he asked nervously.

She sighed impatiently and rolled her eyes, another sight he remembered all too well. She then crossed her arms across her chest and spoke.

"I got a phone call, saying that someone upstairs needed a secretary. I assume that would be you?"

Spike nodded dumbly, taking information that all seemed to make sense but still seemed a touch impossible to believe. Dawn, the Slayer's sister, his secretary? _Stranger things have happened, I suppose_. Like the werewolf girl sleeping with Angel, as an example, what was going on there? In fact, Captain Forehead sleeping with anyone…

"Does Buffy know I'm here?" he asked her. "I mean, does she even know I'm alive? I didn't want to tell her, but I, erm… never wanted to lie to you as well."

Sympathy flashed across her face, and she took his hands in hers. It seemed a curious reversal of their traditional roles, which worried him slightly; in an office environment every day with both Illyria and Dawn, he was going to have to work very hard to maintain the alpha male status. _No, that doesn't make any sense_ , he thought, knowing it was true nonetheless. He took a deep breath as she spoke the words he didn't want to hear.

"It's ok, Spike, she doesn't know, and you made the right choice. She's moving on with her life. It took a while, but she's in a good place right now."

He was still for a couple of seconds, accepting that information, dealing with the hurt it caused but the knowledge that it was for the best. Never before had he felt so like Percy.

"And you?"

She smiled again, and offered him a piece of paper she had been holding, which a brief inspection showed to be her CV.

"I'm here on an internship," she told him, "at the bottom of the ladder in the mythology department. Suddenly I get a call from Mr Wyndham-Price, the department head, saying a high-level secretarial position has opened up, and that I should come upstairs for an interview. So here I am."

* * *

The trial was not going as he had hoped. Gunn remembered how relieved he had felt when he had been informed of the state robes to be worn by those in the Pantheon, that somehow standing up and defending someone while dressed in a ridiculous, baggy, lime green sheet worried him less than putting on that damn pinstripe suit would have done. He just wasn't ready for that yet. He wasn't sure if he ever would be.

The clothes marked the end of the good news, though. A legal position that had seemed unshakeable (you tried to kill them, you're guilty) now hung in the balance, and the outcome was not looking good. That argument about humans having never done anything for another species had seemed exaggerated and childish, and Gunn knew it never would have held weight. Except, he couldn't think of any exceptions. Nor, from the looks of it, could anyone else. And knowing that mankind was selfish and dangerous was making him feel gloomy, and having an even worse effect on his case.

The prosecutor had finished cross-examining Rose a few minutes ago and was now ranting again. Ordinarily, Gunn would have been paying attention to his every word, constantly scrutinising and looking for counter-arguments, but today he really wasn't in the mood, and instead sat back in his chair, idly studying the Pantheon's white marble columns, disappearing into a ceiling lost in shadows far above. He knew that he would also never let his moods affect his work, that he was far more professional than that, but it wasn't every day you were told your entire species was useless.

He knew that it wouldn't be long before he made his closing speech, and he wasn't quite sure what he would say. He knew what he wanted to say, he wanted to scream it at the jury, but he didn't think it would convince them. Should he instead try to persuade them that mankind was fighting to try to undo their mistakes, and hope he was believed? He grimaced, unconvinced he would have bought that himself.

Should he listen to his inner street kid, the one begging for the demons to bring it on, to point out that if they wanted a fight with the number one species on the planet, the ones with nukes and battleships, they were more then welcome? Again, that line was likely to be a bad idea. He didn't have the resources to hold up the case or drag it out any longer, as the rules for the Pantheon were very similar to those of a human court, but not quite the same.

"…doing favour by keeping human numbers in check…"

Man, this guy was a jerk. Gunn hoped the man didn't believe everything he was saying, but knew that would just be wishful thinking. The guy somehow combined the slipperiness of the least honest lawyers around with the fundamental defence of someone doing what they thought was right. Gunn remembered Angel two or three years back telling them the details of rescuing Billy the psycho from the flaming Hell-prison. Having later found out that Billy's sentence had come from the Pantheon, Gunn now painfully hoped a similar sentence would be passed on the wolves. Yet again, he had a bad feeling things weren't going to turn out that way. _One day_ , he told himself, _I'm gonna watch them burn_.

Gunn shook his head to clear the image, then again to clear the whole line of thought. This was one of the reasons he did not want to be a lawyer, it messed with his mind, made him think on the dark side, something he would've liked to avoid if he could. But the most damning bit was that those thoughts didn't come from the lawyer in him. He knew that hunger for vengeance, and he knew it had been there long before Wolfram & Hart poked around in his head. If anything, the lawyer angle had mellowed that bit out, trained it to act more civilly. So there he was, arguing with himself over whether he should hate people – no, not people, demons – for doing something he knew was wrong, and yet their arguments were so strong that he couldn't say why.

And that was the real reason he hated the suit, the courtroom, Wolfram & Hart, and sometimes even Angel, the friendly vampire: because around them, he wasn't sure what was wrong anymore.

* * *

"So how did you guys meet?"

Harmony stood in front of her desk, with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, trying to hide how irritated she was. She didn't know what annoyed her most; that Spike had gone and hired his own personal secretary, younger than she was, or that the girl happened to be the Slayer's little sister. It made her sick, the lengths he would go to just to try to please his precious Buffy. That was why he had done it of course, so that she could go tell her sister how Spike obviously still loved her. Like she was ever going to take him back!

And to make it worse, he had a nickname for her. In less than an hour, she had wormed her way back into his life, much closer than Harmony had ever managed, and that really stung. So she tried to hide her pout and not to glare at the girl behind the desk they'd just put up across the room from her, but she refused to offer smiles. That was why instead she was concentrating on the couple standing half way between them. God, was everyone paired up just to throw it in her face?

"We went to high school together, and then we hooked up in college."

The girl was the one to answer all her questions so far, but the guy kept quiet, which meant he was either the handsome silent type, or just moody. She opened her mouth to respond but Spike's latest pet beat her to it.

"Awww, you guys are so sweet. Could you tell straight away?"

Again, Dawn was totally fawning all over them, sucking up to the clients, which Harmony had been warned against many times. She just smiled grimly knowing the trouble it would cause the other girl in the long run.

"Well, I first realised I had feelings for him when..."

The guy cut across her, outrage strong in his voice.

"What do you mean? Didn't the seething hatred in the preceding years count as feelings?"

She gave him a sympathetic look, yet also with a 'you're pathetic' vibe, the kind Cordy used to give that loser, Xander, and carried on.

"I mean when I discovered that we were more than just friends."

"We were mortal enemies!" he interrupted again, appearing hurt, but Harmony couldn't tell how serious he was being.

"Not literally," he added, glancing quickly over at the door to Spike's office, then Angel's.

"Shut up dear," she said affectionately, and he fell quiet, grumbling something about fond memories of those years.

Harmony stopped paying attention, distracted by the massive crate being wheeled out of the elevator. 'US MILITARY ISSUE, NOT A TOY' was stamped across the side of it, and the scruffy guy pushing it took it over to Dawn's desk. Harmony watched intrigued as the young girl signed for it and then nervously picked up the phone. Spike burst out his office a few moments later, and Harmony noticed something entirely new about him. She'd always known he was hot, well, duh, but for the first time ever, he looked cute. He was bouncing up and down with excitement, grinning away like a ten year old opening a birthday present. Woah. How come he could have so many layers? And what could get him _that_ excited?

* * *

The knock at the door was a welcome relief, and Angel looked up from his desk almost eagerly. It wasn't that looking over next quarter's projections gave him a headache – ok, it was – but his main problem was that it meant spending several hours alone with Hamilton, whose company left him almost able to taste the greasy taint of Wolfram & Hart on his soul. Harmony's head appeared around the door, looking absently cheerful, and Angel hoped his sense of relief wasn't misplaced.

"Wesley's all done giving the new girl the tour, should I send them in?"

Angel nodded, asking Hamilton to excuse them, and suggesting they finished off the projections later. They both stood, and Wesley and Coral entered the room, followed by Harmony closing the door and skittering off back to her desk. Hamilton headed out, casting an interested look at Coral as he did.

"So," Angel began, and was immediately interrupted by the phone ringing. Resisting the temptation to grab the handset and snap at the person on the other end, almost certain to be Harmony, he instead took a deep breath and calmly pressed the speakerphone button. The instant he did so, Gunn's voice burst from the speaker, the audible levels of tension and worry in it were only exacerbated by his heavy breathing, making it obvious he was talking while running somewhere.

"We lost," he said simply, "and have been ordered to cease all efforts to protect the pair of them. I'm on my way up, but I don't think the wolves will be far behind me."

* * *

All heads turned when the door to Angel's office opened, and he stepped out into the main lobby with them, followed by another man slightly less clean shaven, and a blonde woman in her thirties, neither of whom Rose recognised. She might have given the other man a second glance, had he not been standing next to Angel – she couldn't help it, tall, dark and brooding had always been her type – so she snuggled up closer to Ed. He'd know she'd been looking, after all, he always knew, and there was no harm in reassuring him that while she had him, the rest of the male population might as well be impotent. Though she had noticed him checking out Angel's secretary, but his comments had revealed that he thought as little of her brain as Rose did of the girl's blood-red outfit.

Dawn, the nicer secretary who had been chatting to them, had trailed after the vampire in the trenchcoat, leaving just the other one and the two of them in the lobby, and all now got up to head over to Angel and the others to hear the news. From the look on his face, it wasn't good.

"We need to get you two out of here," he said without preamble, clearly indicating Ed and herself.

"So much for demon justice," Ed grumbled beside her, folding his arms. She slipped her arm around his waist, knowing her doing so always calmed him; the last thing they needed now was for someone to kick off.

"We can still protect you, but we lost the court case, which means we need to get you out of this building before the wolves arrive."

"Where will you take them?" asked the man at his side anxiously, revealing a British accent, at which Angel paused, demanding options.

"Well, we have access to several holding dimensions," he began, "but they're all easily traceable from here."

"The Initiative complex downtown is now vacated," the girl suggested, which Angel clearly considered, but then dismissed aloud as being too exposed.

The other man, Wes, Angel had called him, rattled off a few more suggestions, all soon discarded, before the lift doors opened across the room, and Charles Gunn burst out into the room.

"We've got ten minutes, tops!"

He was panting heavily and covered in sweat, and Rose remembered the mile long walk through the sewers from the Pantheon they had travelled earlier, guessing he had just run it.

Gunn quickly joined the debate of where to go, and she listened closely until Ed took her hand in his and led her away to the secluded corner beneath the stairs. He looked worried, something she'd never really seen on him before. It wasn't often that he showed his emotions at all, but fear she had certainly never witnessed. Wanting to comfort him, she clasped his hands with hers and pulled him close.

"I think we'd be making a mistake to run," he whispered in her ear. She backed off to look into his eyes, aghast, before replying.

"You do know that, statistically speaking, it greatly reduces our chances of dying, don't you?"

He made an exasperated sound, agreeing with her summary, but not her conclusion.

"If we start running now, we'll never stop. They'll always be chasing us, and we're never gonna escape them."

"Again, with the not dying," she told him, "still an obvious advantage of the other plan."

He looked at her kindly, a look she recognised, but always had trouble deciding if he was being sympathetic or patronising. Often, she suspected it was both. She'd like to think that in this case his caring side had taken precedence, but would also feel a little slighted if he hadn't taken every possible opportunity to patronise – that would have been a sure sign that something was really wrong.

"We should fight them, here, and now. The wolves will come, but I don't plan to go gently into that good night. Certainly not quietly."

He looked off to one side a little, not distracted, but lost in his imagination as he continued.

"'Til shade is gone, 'til water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last Day."

She smiled and gave him a patient look, drawing him into an embrace and replying with her head against his chest, her smile coming through clearly in her voice.

"Yes dear. You know, you've really got to stop reading those fantasy novels."

He smiled at her, and gently lifted a strand of hair away from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear.

"As you command, my dragon mistress, my white lion of Andor."

She sighed theatrically, raising a hand to her brow, and led Ed back to Angel, Gunn and the other two, still debating where would be best to hide them away.

"And here was me thinking time was an issue," Ed grumbled in her ear, but loud enough that the rest of them could also hear. Angel opened his mouth to respond, but Rose stalled him with a hand on his arm.

"Forget it, we're staying," she told him, "Aragorn here thinks we'd be better off giving them a fight."

Angel and Gunn both immediately burst out with protests, and as a result she heard neither. She looked blankly from one to the other, and after a few seconds they piped down. It was only then that the other man in the group spoke, Wes, his voice quiet and calm.

"There are at least 20 of them, and every one of them could kill you both without serious risk to its life. You saw how unintimidated they were by Angel last night, they have very little fear and a fierce pack mentality. I don't think it's a fight you have a hope of winning."

"We can't help you," Gunn chipped in, "if we tried, it would only make things worse. We, as a company, can have nothing to do with this. Nor can any member of this company as an individual," he said more forcefully, directing that last line at Angel, overriding his stammers of protest.

"Fine, I quit," he snapped.

"Court order still counts," Gunn responded instantly, and Angel's face fell.

"So what we really need," Wes said slowly, "is someone with enough firepower to take on the wolves, but no official connection to Wolfram & Hart."

"Ah, if only we knew someone like that," a voice called across the lobby to them, and Rose turned to spot the blond vampire she'd seen prancing around earlier sauntering towards them.

"Harmony," he continued, turning to the vapid secretary and her lurid red dress, "do _you_ know where we could find such a person?"

The girl looked at him blankly, clearly missing Dawn pointing emphatically at the vampire himself, who looked at her disparagingly for a moment before turning to Angel.

"How does this work? Do I go kill them and send you an invoice?"

Angel folded his arms and scowled, while Wes spoke up.

"Even with Illyria, you'd be hard pressed to take them all on, we've seen at least 20 of them."

"And this isn't about killing the wolves," Angel added, "it's about protecting these two."

The blond vampire shrugged, unperturbed.

"Actually, it was the other bit I was more interested in, when do we get the money?"

Angel shifted to stand more confrontationally and opened his mouth, no doubt to snap, but Dawn slipped into the circle of conversation and forestalled them, laying a hand on the blond's arm and speaking to him quietly.

"I'll take care of it."

Angel shot Dawn a venomous glance as she turned away, but it became a slightly envious one as she headed back to her desk, and he looked reproachfully at his own secretary, who of course missed it entirely.

"Don't be getting too upset if you happen to kill them all in the process," Gunn said to the vampire quietly, who smiled wickedly back.

"Right," Angel asked snidely, "well now we've decided it's ok to overwhelm them when they outnumber us, do we even need to worry about how?"

The other vampire looked at him confidently, almost as if savouring the moment, quickly casting his eye around. Rose had a sneaking suspicion he was checking to make sure everyone else was listening.

"As long as I've got Elizabeth, it shouldn't be a problem."

A short silence followed, first as the others waited for him to continue or explain, then as they looked at each other, almost dreading the answer to the obvious question. After a second or two, Wes took a breath and reluctantly asked.

"Elizabeth?"

Blondie stuck his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels, grinned at them and answered briefly.

"Big gun. Come and see!"

Gesturing enthusiastically with his arms, he led them over to his office, making sure every person in the lobby was coming with him. Dawn jumped up and ran to the door, likely at a discrete signal from him, throwing it open when the group got there. Rose followed closely behind the others, Ed taking her hand in his, and peered over their shoulders to try to see into the vampire's office.

"Well, the man wasn't lying," Ed whispered in her ear, and just as he did so she caught sight of it, sitting on the floor beside an opened crate, and her jaw dropped. That really was a _big_ gun. She didn't think anyone else was close enough to hear Angel whisper to the other vampire.

"You named your gun after...?"

"Yeah yeah, you'll get over it," the blond interrupted, sauntering forwards into his office to stand proudly beside the, uh, cannon, on the carpet.

"And clearly you won't..." Angel added quietly, though judging from the flicker in the other vampire's eyes, he had heard. Enhanced vampire senses, she supposed.

Everyone else was still staring dumbstruck into the office, unable to speak, but it seemed Gunn was beginning to break the giant gun's hypnotic spell.

"See, if _I'd_ have gone and bought a chaingun, y'all would have made jokes about drive-bys and gangster rap."

Wes clapped a hand on Gunn's shoulder in mock-consolation, before the woman in the group, blonde, and slightly older, who had otherwise stayed pretty quiet, spoke up.

"Actually, technically, that's a minigun, as it has more than one barrel."

Gunn nodded absently, then after a moment turned to stare at her. In silence, the others copied, one by one. Soon faced by a wall of people staring at her, she explained herself to the silent onlookers.

"I was with the military in South American jungle for 18 months. Ever seen Predator?"

A few more nods greeted this, but the quiet was only broken when the blond vampire spoke up, a little sheepishly.

"…Don't suppose you could come with me and show me how to load the thing?"

The woman's eyes flicked to Angel for a second before responding.

"Sure."

The blond bent down to lift the huge gun, slinging a thick strap over his shoulder to carry it with, as the woman turned to Angel again.

"Get going," he said without hesitation.

* * *

It would have been more convenient for her if Los Angeles were red. The abundance of concrete and steel contrasted too severely with her carapace to make camouflage an effective strategy. She had once contemplated altering the hue of the appearance of her shell, yet the shell was now all she had, all she was, and she was unwilling to compromise her own existence as others required it. She would have found it more pleasing if the city were instead repainted to match her.

"It disgusts me that we are reduced to sneaking in this fashion," she announced bitterly, "no less cowardly now it is my only viable option for survival."

She spoke to Spike sideways as they walked, and he responded without halting his vigilance around them.

"Yeah, well, Lizzie here might be able to fix that, but let's make sure she works first."

He patted the side of the steel beast with affection, and only turned to her after a pause to finish his reply. Once a half-breed would have screamed for days for addressing her with such familiarity, now even she herself took only marginal offence, and she did not make it evident. All had come to nothing. The shell was truly all she had left.

"And that's a Hell of a strong dose of self-loathing you're on there."

She glanced across at him quizzically, before looking to Wesley walking behind them as she replied.

"I learned from an expert."

Illyria lacked practice at determining human facial expressions, and so was not certain if Wesley's was amused or distant. Beside him walked the scientist, saying nothing, which Illyria respected. It troubled her that she felt respect for a creature she had rescued six days earlier, when she should have crushed one of such weakness, yet silence was such an infrequent occurrence among humans that she treasured it. She felt revulsion, knowing that this was to be her life now, escorting and protecting those weaker than her, a task far beneath her dignity.

"Here ought to do," came the voice of the scientist, and Illyria surveyed their chosen site. Overlooking the entrance to the Wolfram & Hart structure, they had a fine view of the battlefield, and their elevated stance on the scaffold opposite the steps leading to the front entrance gave them an ideal location to rain violent justice upon their enemies. Illyria smiled at the notion, and the scientist, the one Spike had named as Coral, appeared intimidated. This, Illyria could also respect, too few in this world feared her as they rightfully should. And causing terror, pain and death were now what Spike had called her job description. Perhaps her new life would not be entirely without merit.

As she watched, the dark-haired vampire emerged from Wolfram & Hart, leading the tall man and the shorter woman. The vampire had called them clients, but Spike had used the term 'bait.' As soon as the three figures stepped out onto the concrete, a howl came from bushes nearby, echoing around the dark streets. Illyria instantly dropped to a crouch, and the howl was followed by several more, revealing concealed enemies on all sides, some within immediate proximity.

Illyria leapt sideways from the scaffold, her legs gliding over her head and down to bear her as she touched on the ground. Even in her weak form, she endeavoured to retain as much grace as her shell would permit. She remained pleasantly surprised by the delights of having hair, the way it would swing when she turned her head or threw herself into battle. She felt it cut through the air behind her as she spun to deliver swift kicks to ribcages, savouring the sound of each one imploding before the impacts carried them away from her.

She felt a slight pressure on the ankle that remained planted on the ground supporting her, and looked down to see one of the man-dogs attempting to sever it. She peered at the beast curiously, trying to understand why it thought it would be able to do damage to one of her stature, observing how its teeth ground ineffectively against the shell. Her curiosity lasted scant seconds before indignation took preference, and she tore the creature in half.

She extended her arm out behind her to catch the sword Spike threw, and swept it in a wide arc, decapitating two and severing the spine of a third. In death, these creatures made noises that would satisfy her, at least temporarily. She danced from end to end of the base of the scaffold, preventing any of the man-beasts from getting close enough to damage Spike, Wesley or the scientist.

The humans had again failed, with all their praise of the wondrous steel beast that would drive metal through the hearts of their enemies. She had been wrong to worry that she would be surplus to requirements, as the machine had yet to fell a single foe, and she had destroyed twenty seven. _Twenty nine_ , she updated as she pirouetted and lunged again.

"Just a few more seconds," Spike called down from the scaffold, and she adjusted her position to fend off the man-dogs, rather than to aggressively force them back. Though she had given him warning of the dishonour it would cause her, Spike had insisted that she retreat from the glorious fray once his new weapon was breathing fire, lest it cause harm to her shell.

She attacked with the broadsword a final time, aiming delicately, but without reducing the speed or force of her swing. The move opened up two throats, and bought her the time to climb up the side of the scaffold, ascending swiftly and effortlessly. Her arrival beside Spike coincided with the steel monster coming to life, and she watched as he directed its fire across their foes. The metal teeth tore apart the enemy, felling them in waves as crops before a flood.

Illyria bathed in the rich copper smell of blood, mixing with the fiery aroma coming from the cannon to bring her deep satisfaction, and she felt herself laughing and throwing her head back with delight she had not known in an age. The steel beast, Elizabeth, was good, she decided.

* * *

"So what happened? Where are Ed and Rose? Are they ok? Did you get all the wolves?"

Spike, sitting at his desk, was nearly driven backwards into the wall the second Dawn entered their office with an eager barrage of questions. He motioned at her with his hands to slow down, and when that made no audible difference, tried instead miming for her to remember to breathe. When she had finally run out of questions, Spike waited a second before responding, cherishing the silence.

"No, in a word. No, we got this lot, but they'll keep coming. And therefore no, the two of them are not ok, they're safe for now, but it won't last."

Dawn appeared crestfallen, and Spike thought he normally would have tried to cheer her up, but the events had left him feeling rather gloomy himself.

"And where are they now?"

Leaning back in his chair and setting his feet up on the desk, Spike gave her a half smile. Across the room, Illyria was silently hanging her various swords and daggers back on their respective perches. Elizabeth sat in the middle of the floor, still gleaming.

"The girl mentioned heading out of town, I don't know if she'll be taking him with her."

Dawn's eyes widened in surprise, and Spike remembered seeing her speaking with the couple earlier. _Bonding with the clients, never a good move_.

"Turns out," he continued, "that it's actually only the girl that the wolves are after. Don't know why, some archaic tradition I think. But the pair of them know that now, and I don't know how they plan to deal with it."

Spike's eyebrow raised only a little as he noticed Dawn help herself to the chair beside the door, crossing her legs as she sat down, looking concerned.

"Their chances of victory are significantly increased if they are together," Illyria chipped in.

"This is true, but that means dragging the bloke into mortal peril completely unnecessarily."

Spike watched as both girls appeared to consider that, one staring out of the window and frowning slightly, searching for a solution, the other with her head askew, blue pupils impossibly wide.

"If they stay together, they'll be happier, but never at peace," Dawn began.

"And apart, they will live longer, but remain in misery," Illyria finished.

"And there you have it," Spike said into the silence that followed. "Love is the most terrible force in the world."

* * *

6.02: The Wolves, My Love, Will Come, of Angel: Still Falling, written by Out For Bloody Summer and edited by Monotone, is original work copyright 2009. Please seek permission from the authors before distributing, and only do so on the condition that the original text and this notice are intact and no charge or fee of any description is levied for it. "Angel" and all related properties are trademarks of and copyright 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Telecision, and David Greenwalt Productions. The authors are not connected in any way with the copyright owners. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by this non-commercial exercise. All characters and events depicted here are entirely ficticious, which is probably a good thing. Hope you enjoyed the show, all comments welcome, but please see the extended setup blog for our policies on replying. Join us next time for Episode 3.


	4. 603: Hindsight

"And traffic's snarled up for up to a mile in both directions from the smash, must be a bad one, for more we're gonna go to KBBL's eyes in the sky, Joe Kowalski on the Trafficopter, How's it looking from up there Joe?"

 _I'm gonna be late._

Not for the first time, crawling through the almost stationary traffic of morning Los Angeles, Dawn felt a rising annoyance as she tapped the wheel of her car and stared blankly across the lanes of unmoving vehicles. Catching the eye of a driver next door, she realised she'd been staring and looked away hurriedly. She pretended to be absorbed in fiddling with the radio dial for what seemed long enough, and glanced up again – the lane was moving, and the car behind her sounded its horn impatiently. She inched the car forward all of twelve feet before she was stopped again by the bright red brake lights of the car in front.

 _Didn't even_ have _a car in Sunnydale,_ she thought. Wasn't really needed in such a small town. _Plus, Buffy didn't want me driving. Probably thought I'd be as bad as her._ But now, she was here, shacking up with Probably Evil Inc. and sitting in traffic, drumming her fingers with the rest of LA's commuters and pretending her boss would actually notice if she was late.

* * *

(Still Falling Title Sequence, well worth watching, viewable here: Youtube URL / watch?v=i2z_ak4WWDo)

"You know, that doesn't actually make it faster."

The voice made her jump slightly, and she turned away from the elevator call buttons to see a young man, probably no older than her, wearing a sharp suit with a red tie and sporting dark hair slicked into what he presumably thought was a winning style. He had a sheepish grin she recognised from the mirror on her first day, and clutched a brand new briefcase. She smiled, he was cute.

"Never know, in this building." She replied. He returned the smile, glancing slightly nervously at his feet in mirror finished shoes. "First day?" she asked, warmly. He nodded.

"That obvious?" he asked, a little embarrassed.

"Oh no, just... It's the shoes." She replied apologetically. An expectant ping sounded and an upwards arrow on the grubby wall of the underground parking lot lit up. The elevator doors rumbled open, and a harassed looking employee hurried past them.

"Well, after you," the young man said to Dawn.

"No, please," she gestured, and he nodded, walking into the waiting elevator. Dawn tried to stifle a gasp as he stepped in front of her, and his long red tail trailed behind him. Inexpertly turning the gasp into a cough, she stepped in behind him and the doors slid closed.

From the quiet of the employee parking level, the bustling lobby was always quite a shock as the elevator doors slid open again, depositing Dawn onto its polished wooden floor. All around her the corporate body of Wolfram & Hart seemed alive, humming with the energy of purposeful-

"Afternoon, late-o." Slightly annoyed at the voice that had interrupted her grand thoughts, Dawn turned to Harmony, standing behind her desk chewing gum and balancing a pen on her finger. "Get stuck on the freeway again?"

Dawn nodded.

"You should so take the sewers, much clearer in the morning rush, though you'd need to watch out for that family of Heslack demons that work at Wal-Mart, they'll eat your forearms if there's a line at Dunkin Donuts." Harmony continued.

"Yeah, not sure if I want to go crawling through the sewers to work." Dawn replied. Harmony shrugged, and popped her gum.

"I just figured if you had a quicker route you could like, have time for your hair in the morning."

"I _do_ my hair in the morning."

"Oh. Sure. Hey, Spike's in his office, you'd better get him his blood, you know he likes to get it first so he can get that mug Angel likes, and-" Harmony started, and Dawn interrupted.

"Spike's in? At 9:20?"

"Yeah, some big client meeting or something, something icky wants something ickier killed, you know the drill."

 _Didn't bother to tell me then_ , Dawn thought. She rolled her eyes and strode off to her own desk. Through the glass she could see Spike leaning back on his executive leather chair and twirling an ornate dagger between his fingers as Harmony had her pen. Behind his head was a collection of weapons, carefully chosen to trump Angel's in size and lethality, proudly displayed at somewhat wonky angles. She sank into her chair and found herself watching him through the glass.

She couldn't remember having such incredibly mixed feelings about someone since her father left. Somehow, Spike seemed to straddle two conflicting memories – he had been almost a pseudo parent when Buffy died, she'd literally put her life in his hands – but she couldn't dispel the tight knot that rose in her stomach when she played Xander's words in her mind. _Sure, if he wasn't too busy trying to rape your sister_. And as for what he and Buffy has spent nearly a year doing behind their backs... _perhaps 'straddle' wasn't the best word._

* * *

"Pergamon Codex, original Greek."

Wesley opened the heavy leather-bound source book and watched words of Ancient Greek spill across the page. He picked up his magnifying glass eagerly and leaned over the text. _Why do I always use this?_ He thought, and, glancing up to check that Wilson had left before leaning into the book and adding self consciously "Large print." A pause, and then the text rippled, reappearing twice the size. A self satisfied grin on his face, Wesley grabbed his notebook and bent over the open page. The pages ruffled, and Wesley felt a chilly wind. Looking up, he expected to see Wilson coming in the door, but the room was empty and still. With a slight shrug, he returned to his work.

This time the wind nearly knocked him out of his seat. The notebooks on his table flew off, scattering across the floor and in a flash of blue light a figure appeared in the centre of the room, upturning the table of source books, sending them tumbling to the floor. Wesley leapt up, and backed up against the wall, grasping with one hand for the curved ornamental blade beneath the doughnut box on the sideboard.

"Tremble, mortal, before Lord Latharia, Master of the Fates, Gatekeeper to the Dungeons of Time!" the figure roared from beneath its blue cloak. It raised an arm, pointing like an image of Death towards Wesley, and the voice rumbled again. "You are the one called Wyndham-Price?"

Wesley drew himself up, summoned what was hopefully a confident voice, and answered "I am h- I mean to say, that is I- er, yes. I am." He finished, rather unimpressively. Immediately, the figure's demeanour changed. It sank to the floor so the cloak no longer billowed ominously around its feet, and threw back its hood, revealing a gaunt blue-tinged head wrapped in a sparkly turban. Wesley was nonplussed for a second – the figure before him, suddenly much less intimidating in his colourful headgear, was beaming at him across the room.

"Well I'm glad to hear it! Hate projecting for the wrong person, you've no _idea_ the paperwork. Sorry about the entrance bit, policy, you know how it is. Those Krispy Kremes!?" His eyebrows had shot up at the sight of the cardboard box on the side. Wesley nodded, speechless, and his guest bustled over. "Call me Lathy, by the way, everyone does, always fancied a trip here, see the big law firm in the hands of the vampire with a soul, very exciting time, mustn't say too much you know, very hush hush, but, oh, some interesting times."

"Erm, I don't mean to sound rude but-" Wesley started.

"What the bloody hell am I doin' in your office? Great question." Lathy beamed again, polishing off the last doughnut and gliding to the chair on the far side of Wesley's desk. Gratefully, Wesley sunk into his own chair, still not convinced he wouldn't feel better with the dagger in his hand.

"I'm a member of the Guardians of Fate. Have you heard of us?"

"I- ah- can't say that I have." Wesley replied.

"Well good." Lathy smiled broadly at the reply. "That's sort of the point. But we've always been here, one way or another – well we had a bit of a pay dispute last year, whole big thing, anyway, we watch time, destinies, the fates of man and demon, that sort of thing. We make sure things run as they're supposed to, how they ran the first time."

"The _first_ time?"

"It's a bit complicated, but when things happen the first time, the "real" time," Lathy explained, using air quotes with long bony blue fingers, "they set things up a certain way, events are written, destinies decided. You gotta realise, the universe – pretty damn big. That's a lot of stories, fates, interlinking, affecting each other. You change something, makes _serious_ waves. Like a pond, you know, ripples breaking the surface. It opens doors that were closed tight, lets people in where they shouldn't be, it can _really_ mess things up."

"I'm sorry – 'change something'?" Wesley asked, his head spinning a little. He was mentally scanning ways he could get Angel's attention in the next office without the stranger over the desk realising. His list was pretty short so far – hope Angel pops in for a chat, for the first time in two years. Lathy didn't seem bothered by Wesley's discomfort, and carried on merrily with his explanation.

"Well, every now and then something happens which causes really big temporal effects. Real headache for us Guardians. You had an event like that about 5 months ago, pretty sure you noticed; time skipping, remembering things that haven't happened, Old Ones exploding... ringing any bells?"

"Illyria." Wesley replied, looking concerned. "But we stopped her from exploding, didn't we? All the tes-"

"Oh don't worry big guy, she's safe." Lathy interrupted, his jollity seeming remarkably uninfectious to Wes, who was beginning to be irritated. "Thing is, before you zapped her with your flux capacitor, she was sending out some pretty big waves – time in this building was jumping around all over the place, Illyria's entire history was seeing some major instability. You stopped her dropping stones, but the ripples were already spreading."

"And this is- bad?" Wesley proffered, hoping to draw his visitor to an ever-elusive point.

"In itself, no, you sorted the change at this end, things'll settle down pretty soon. But you remember I said about opening doors? Well, when she did that, someone went through."

* * *

"What's going on in there?" Dawn asked, bending to peer around the window frame into Angel's office. It seemed everyone was in there, standing and sitting around the room, apparently listening to Wesley. She clutched a folder full of paper, and glanced back to see if Harmony had heard her. Clearly surprised a response was expected, she craned her neck to see round Dawn.

"Some kind of meeting, they all went in there after Wes came out of his office, Angel made me call Hamilton and everything. Must be something pretty big if he's talking to Hamilton, you know, on purpose."

"I've got to give Spike this," Dawn said, showing Harmony the folder, "it's the data he wanted on that rash of young girl murders in the city."

"Probably better wait 'til they get out, Angel's got his frown on." Harmony advised.

"Yeah..." Dawn answered, unconvinced. She toyed with a paper clip between her fingers as she contemplated the door. It was clear that Harmony was kept out of anything important that happened around here. And it seemed she was just fine with that. But it also meant they weren't going to include _her_ unless she included herself. Putting the paper clip on the desk with as much conviction as she could muster, she said "Spike did say he wanted this as _soon_ as I had it," and before Harmony could answer had walked to the double doors, knocked once smartly and slipped inside.

Wesley paused briefly to glance at Dawn, who mouthed "Sorry," and walked around the back of the room to Spike, painfully aware of the eyes boring into her.

"If that was the end of your story, you just wasted 15 minutes" Spike said to Wesley, and Dawn smiled gratefully at him as Wesley shook his head slightly and continued. Sliding the folder into Spike's lap, she leant casually against the sofa arm and listened.

"The Guardian is convinced that someone, probably a demon, someone with senses honed for this sort of temporal jumping, has managed to navigate the ripples in time, and intends to use the instability to make changes to the way things played out."

"Change the future." Coral supplied from the other side of the room.

"Exactly." Wesley replied. "This traveller's connections go a long way up the corporate chain, even the Guardians don't seem sure who his ultimate master is, but what is clear is that he has a particular score to settle."

"Let me guess." Spike interrupted. "With the guys down in the motor pool, right load of wankers, never let me use the good wheels." Off the other's looks, he added "Or, it could be us."

"Specifically, the goal seems to be to stop the convergence of events which led to us taking over Wolfram & Hart. Precisely how he'll do that, the Guardian couldn't tell me, but because she's the source of the instability, he has access to Illyria's entire lifetime."

"Isn't she about a billion years old?" Coral asked.

"Two, give or take an eon." Wesley replied. "Which gives us a bit of a needle in a haystack situation. But Lathy told me that someone with access to the dimensional folds should be able to track this traveller fairly easily, follow in his wake."

"Accessing dimensional folds... no, that wasn't in the induction pack Wesley gave me, how did we do that last time?" Coral asked, glancing at Angel, who stood with Hamilton beside his desk.

"Actually, that one's new to us," Angel said. "The Senior Partners have picked up one or two trinkets over the millennia; Hamilton's been kind enough to fetch this one from the archives. Marcus?"

Hamilton reached into his pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in faded black cloth. He put it down on the desk and folded away the material. Inside was the largest gemstone Dawn had ever seen, a sapphire as wide as her palm. They all crowded around the desk as Hamilton picked up the stone.

"The name, legend has it that this once belonged to the great wizard of good and light Merlin," he began, his voice dripping with disdain at the name, "and it was the source of his power of time manipulation. The Senior Partners acquired it in the 13th Century but failed to activate it at the time. It's the opinion of most of the Partners that it is merely... a pretty stone. However, it is the only power source we have potentially capable of achieving what you need."

Hamilton passed the glistening gem to Wesley, who turned it over and over in his hands, examining it.

"And the Partners are just... _letting_ us have it?" Gunn asked from behind him, his expression wary. Dawn didn't have the full picture of what had happened here over the past 12 months, but she had gleaned enough to understand. They had learnt to their great cost that nothing they wanted came free of charge. As Hamilton was so fond of reminding them, this was a business. And they were very much in the business of deals with the devil.

"The Senior Partners are very pleased with the arrangement we have with you, Mr. Gunn, and are hopeful that Angel will be able to fulfil his destiny through us," replied Hamilton, his voice at its most obsequious. "They will of _course_ make available to you such resources as are needed to prevent the alterations to your history."

"Well I don't know what we'll be able to do with this that Wolfram & Hart's best couldn't figure out, especially since we're on a bit of a clock here," said Wesley, passing the stone to Gunn, who glanced at it disdainfully before passing it to Coral. "The ripples Illyria caused are fading fast, whatever this traveller is planning to do, it will be very soon. And if he's successful, we could very well cease to exist, or live very different lives. And we wouldn't even realise the difference."

"I might be able to rig up a computer interface to tap into the power source," Coral said speculatively, "but that could take weeks if it's even possible."

Spike took the gem and peered into it, shaking it experimentally, and, disappointed, handed it to Dawn. As her hand closed around it, it felt ice cold, the edges very sharp against her fingertips. She held it up to get a better look and she saw a pulse of brilliant blue light shine out of it, as if it had come from the core of the crystal itself. _It must have caught the light_ , she rationalised, and reached over to pass it back to Angel when it visibly pulsed again. He stopped mid sentence, and she realised the others had seen it too – she was facing six pairs of eyes, ranging from concerned to fascinated.

"What was that?" Gunn asked tentatively. "Did everyone else see it do that weird flashy thing?"

"Certainly." Wesley answered excitedly, peering forward at the crystal as it pulsed again. Dawn felt suddenly scared and put it down rather too hard on Angel's desk. "It seems that the stone responds to Dawn," he continued. "I can only assume it has to do with your, ah- history." He tailed off, and glanced sheepishly at Dawn.

The word that she had been trying to repress since she saw the crystal shimmer in her hand pushed its way into her mind again: key. Despite her memories of the first fifteen years of her life, she knew, had almost come to accept, that she was really only about 5 years old. But it was a lot easier to deal with when it didn't come up as soon as she started a new job.

"But I thought I wasn't the Key anymore?" She asked, looking to Wesley for explanation.

"Well the door you, er, Glory used you to open is closed, but you could easily be the key to more than one lock."

"But Giles said-" She started

"Oh Giles said." Spike interrupted, his tone sarcastic but not unkind. "You're telling me you've never noticed the difference when Giles knows and when Giles just hopes something sounds good?"

"He cleans his glasses a lot less when it's true." Angel supplied, apologetically.

"Sorry, but what's a 'key' – besides the obvious?" Coral asked.

"Dawn is – or rather, the Key was - a mystical energy that had the power to tear through interdimensional walls, unlock doors we don't even usually know are there." Wesley answered. "To hide it from a particularly unpleasant hell god named Glory, an order of Italian monks fashioned it into human form, and that's, well, Dawn. The Key still functions, but through her."

"She's like that Chinese guy on _The Matrix_." Spike interjected.

"Does _everyone_ here have superpowers?" Coral asked, faintly indignant.

"Fascinating history this young lady has." Hamilton spoke up, his face registering none of the surprise of a moment before. "I daresay it could be used to our advantage. This is top priority for the Senior Partners, Angel, they've expended far too many resources on establishing our relationship here for that all to be wiped away. Once again the team here seems to have delivered the goods, so it would be prudent to be moving things along."

"Hey! I'm not goods!" Dawn responded.

"I'm not about to let Dawn disappear off to God-knows-where to track down some unknown enemy who _may_ be trying to change the past. I doubt we can even figure out how to work that thing properly." Angel responded, firmly, and pulling the cloth back over the gemstone on the table.

"Well, actually with a couple of my books-" Wesley began, but stopped at Angel's glower. "Right, doubt it's even possible. Terrible long shot, really. Wouldn't recommend it."

"Angel, I don't think I've made clear the strength of the Senior Partners' feelings on this one." Hamilton continued. "With due deference to your position as CEO, this isn't a _request_."

Angel turned to Hamilton, eyes flashing dangerously. "I don't respond well to threats, Marcus; there's blood, broken glass. And if maintenance have to replace that window one more time..."

"Why don't we just go grab one of your beauties from the motor pool downstairs?" Gunn asked. Dawn registered surprise.

"You have a DeLorean?" She giggled. Gunn smiled.

"Not our first time portal jumpin'," he explained. "When we went to Pylea for Lorne's beautiful Homecoming we all shacked up in Angel's car, metal around us kept us together. If this mojo works like that mojo, you wouldn't be going through alone."

"Not alone is good." Dawn replied, aware that her face was betraying her real thought: _Not going at all is even better. What happened to "not about to let that happen"?_

"Well I doubt that this, ah- 'mojo' will work in exactly the same way, but Gunn has a point – if we can figure out how to send a group of us instead of one..." Wesley tailed off, already lost in thought.

"Wes, you and Coral get cracking on this," Angel said, and Dawn was struck, not for the first time, by how commanding he could be – out of touch as he occasionally seemed here in the corporate glass tower, he was in his element now, the General. As his two troops headed out of the door, he continued, "Gunn, see about putting together an arsenal for the trip. If we do this thing, Spike and I will go along with you and Dawn."

"Erm, I know you've been inside for a lifetime or two, but we've been going through a bit of a sunny patch the last billion years or so." Gunn replied. "Don't fancy taking you two along and appearing in the middle of the Mojave."

"Now wait a bloody minute – there's no way Dawn's going on some suicidal wild goose chase with just Percy and DA Joe backing her up." Spike spoke up, glancing at Gunn and adding "No offence, Charlie boy."

Dawn felt a surge of fondness for Spike, and for a second all she could think of was that night, years ago, when she'd seen Spike as close to death as she imagined a vampire could get without fitting in a vacuum cleaner, knowing that he'd endured everything a hell god could throw at her to protect her and Buffy. She had snuck into this meeting less than half an hour ago a secretary – _an assistant_ – curious about what the important people were talking about. Now, quite literally out of the blue, she was facing an apparently vitally important mission of her own and Spike and Angel sitting it out didn't make her feel much better about it.

"Hey I know we're no substitute for the fang gang, but we have our moments - you'll be safe with us." Gunn was speaking to her, the confidence in his voice zapping her latent courage to life and she managed a smile.

* * *

"Any luck?"

Startled, Coral's hand slipped and a shower of sparks flew off the torch in her hand. Recovering herself quickly, she pulled herself up to see Wesley striding toward her across the science lab. He carried a thick volume under his arm and his face and creased shirt betrayed his weariness. Despite the intense heat from the welding torch, a chill seemed to percolate the lab that hadn't been there a moment before. She pulled off her goggles, ran her hand through her newly dyed black hair, and gestured to the creation on the floor.

"Some." She said. "I wish this book of yours had picked a different thing to bind you with, it's pretty hard to scrounge up that amount of titanium on forty five minutes' notice." By her feet was a bizarre ring of shiny metal, crudely welded sheets, pieces of equipment, strapped together with chains. Dangling from three equally spaced bolts were single handcuffs. "This has to be the strangest thing I've ever built in a lab. Unless you count that time in my postdoc with the Chihuahua."

Wesley barely seemed to notice she had spoken, let alone acknowledge her attempt to lighten the mood. He crouched, examining her construction. Looking down at his unshaven face, she noticed a line deeper than the others born of fatigue and sadness; straighter, more deliberate. And crossing his neck as if made by an executioner's blade. She felt a pang of sadness for the man, at once Angel's seen-it-all, battle hardened right hand man and in a way the most wretched sight she'd ever seen.

"Should work." Wesley concluded shortly, straightening up. The silence that followed hung in the air, and Coral shifted her weight awkwardly behind her bench, flitting her eyes to the laptop screen to avoid catching Wesley's. The name neither would say, the topic they could never discuss, choked any small talk that came to Coral's mind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Wesley shake his head almost imperceptibly, turn and walk away. She let her eyes leave the screen to follow him out, feeling herself relax as the door swung closed.

* * *

 _The blood flows, the gates will open._

The words of the text Giles had given her swum through Dawn's mind as she sat on the steps of Wolfram & Hart's unusually empty lobby. She looked down at the large blue gemstone on the step beside her, still partially wrapped in its cloth, and stroked it tentatively, glimpsing a twinkle of blue light shine beneath her finger. _The blood flows_. She could see where this was going already. _I wonder if it needs drops... or pints,_ she thought. She almost laughed out loud, and stifled it clumsily with a cough. This entire thing seemed suddenly so hilarious. She was about to go _time travelling_ after some conveniently vague bad guy who was trying to stop... what? Their happy dysfunctional family? Only the day before Angel had thrown Hamilton out of his office three times and ranted to Wesley across the lobby about their futile attempts to bring good to Wolfram  & Hart. And here they were fighting a faintly confusing clock to save it all, keep everything just the way it was.

She grinned, shook her head and picked herself up from the step, somehow cheered by her assessment. Stepping over piles of Wesley's books she weaved her way to where Angel stood brooding over the former Watcher's frenzied activity before him. He managed a weak smile as she approached, apparently supposed to display confidence. She raised an eyebrow at him before turning to survey Wesley's efforts.

"This is nuts." She said. Angel looked deeply concerned.

"You can absolutely back out at any time, don't feel..." He started.

"Nah, it's cool. I'm not saying that, I'm saying I thought it over, and this is nuts," she interrupted, smiling sideways at him so he didn't take it badly. "Besides, if I get stuck in the past I am _so_ gonna mess with stuff. What company makes that hair gel of yours?"

Dawn slipped away grinning, as Angel's concerned hand went instinctively to his hair behind her.

"Right I think we're all set here. We just need our ah-" Wesley said from the floor.

"Arsenal?" Gunn interrupted cheerfully from the lift. He was almost obscured by an enormous array of weapons clutched in his arms, sticking out of a backpack and hanging round his neck, clattering and swinging perilously as he sauntered toward them.

"You wanna leave us one in case we need to stake something?" Angel said sarcastically eying the collection that crashed to the floor by his feet.

"Just being ready for anything; we need crushin', we've got crushin', we need slicin', we got slicin''," Gunn replied, gesturing to different piles of weapons as he spoke. "We need apocalyptic badassery, we got –" He swung up an enormous axe, gleaming steel with the curvature of a human spine, the handle sharpened into a point, and a comb of lethal spikes arched over the blade. "What we waitin' for?" He finished. "Let's get chained up to the TARDIS already."

Dawn slid a knife into her boot, swung a crossbow strap over her shoulder, and stepped into the ring of metal with Wesley and Gun, weapons strapped about their person. It was a tight squeeze and Dawn realised this must look fairly comical – glancing up she caught Spike's amused grin from behind Angel's frowning worry. Rolling her eyes, she pulled out the glistening jewel and glanced awkwardly over her shoulder to Wesley. "So what do you reckon? Magic words?"

* * *

While Gunn and Wesley held up the metal ring, struggling with one hand cuffed to it, she pressed her finger against the end of a crossbow bolt and moved it slightly. A sharp pain, and a drop of blood sat on the end of her finger. Accepting an encouraging nod from Wesley, she pressed her finger against the blue jewel, drawing a circle of blood around its surface. Almost immediately she slightly regretted it as the floor seemed to fall away leaving her with a sensation of weightless floating. Her vision swam and her head pulsed with vertigo and confusion. All around her she could see a maze of circles, interconnecting lines... _no, waves_ , she thought – ripples. So Wesley had been quite literal about that then. Completely unaware of any other senses, unable to feel the metal or the others chained to it with her, she tried stepping forward, and the world she could vaguely discern through the haze shifted bizarrely, like a video played on rewind. A shape, a person, was visible seated on the steps – a girl, by the hair length. Hair just like hers... She was looking at herself, not twenty minutes earlier, and turning her head she could make out a frenzy of activity on the floor below her, watched over by a broad shouldered figure in a black coat. _OK Wes, that's pretty cool_ , she thought. Fighting the disorientating nausea, she tried to focus, tried to look for the disruptions that Wesley had described. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the movement, the cacophony of barely recognisable shapes and noises which threatened to overwhelm her. Willing herself to focus, she opened her eyes again, and realised ahead of her, stretching out from one of the figures on the floor was a clear path through the ripples, like a well worn track through a cornfield. Steeling herself against the barrage, she moved purposefully towards it – walking, she guessed, but with no physical sensation in her legs. As she walked the scene around her shifted, twisted, and she was changing place now as well as time, catching glimpses of cityscapes, alleyways, docks, a hotel decorated as if it were 1950, snippets of conversation, as fleeting as passing strangers in the street. She sped up, sprinting now, and suddenly tripped, on the edge of a kerb, solid and real, and feeling rushed back to her legs as she tumbled on to her knees, grazing her palm. Wincing she pulled herself onto her knees and looked around. The jewel, still brilliant blue even in the dingy semi darkness of the poorly lit alley, lay a few feet away, and she snatched it up and shoved it into her pocket.

She peered into the gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust. _Don't bring a torch then, genius_ , she thought.

"Wesley?" She said timidly, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silent street. "Gunn?"

Only the distant sound of a train replied. _Sweet._ She was, it appeared, very much alone. _So much for that plan_ , she thought _. Alone, dark alley, no phone, probably a vamp nest round the corner. Yeah, this'll end well. So, if I were an evil time traveller out to destroy Angel, where would I be?_

She stood, dusted off the knees of her jeans and looked around, trying to make herself feel confident. _I've fought vampires before. The dark really doesn't scare me anymore_.

A loud whoop broke the silent air, and she jumped about a foot in the air, wheeling round to see a gang of maybe twenty people turning into the alley, all clutching makeshift weapons – baseball bats, sharpened chair legs, large kitchen knives. Her heart had skipped a beat but with a rush of relieved familiarity she heard the voice of the swaggering leader.

"Woo! They was dust before they could forehead – what's that now JC, twelve in five nights?"

"I did count twelve little ash piles, G"

"That's a whole lotta necks we saved, told ya we could do some good out here" Gunn playfully jabbed the girl walking beside him, a sharpened bat over her shoulder. This Charles looked younger, much younger than the man Dawn had seen in Wolfram & Hart's lobby – it was as much in his carefree swagger and beaming, triumphant expression as it was his appearance, dressed in loose fitting pants and a bright orange hoodie, a black bandana tied around his head. The girl was shorter, with busy hair catching the yellow light of the streetlamps. She didn't share Gunn's exuberance and looked pensive.

"And what about Tommy, G? That vamp jumped him soon as we were in the door," she replied, her tone accusatory. Dawn slipped backwards into a corner between buildings where she hoped the shadow would hide her from view.

"We got him didn't we?" she heard Gunn reply, as the group passed her, too preoccupied by their leader's words to notice Dawn.

"And what if you don't 'get him' next time?" the girl responded. "It's one thing to fight to look after our own, keep our block free for the guys, but this Charles Gunn, Demon Hunter shtick is gonna get one of your guys killed. Or you killed."

The gang had passed too far down the street for Dawn to pick up Gunn's answer. Staying in the shadows by the wall, she followed them down the rest of the alley until they disappeared into an opening between two buildings, and the street was suddenly quiet again. Approaching, Dawn peered into the gloom, but saw only blackness. Glancing round the street presented no other obvious options, so she picked her way carefully into the darkness, feeling her way along the wall with an outstretched hand.

* * *

The opening led to a heavy door, below a feeble lamp flickering behind a dirty metal cage. She raised her hand to knock when a heavier, gloved hand took hold of her shoulder. She yelped in surprise, and tried to turn it into a greeting that sounded streetwise when she saw the quizzical face of a guy, not too much older than her, staring back at her. He was shorter than her, Hispanic, with a heavy jacket and a fatigue cap pulled low over his eyes.

"Shouldn't be 'round here," he said shortly. Dawn racked her brains – it was obvious that Angel wasn't gonna show up in this little urban sketch, he probably hadn't even set foot in LA yet. So this demon, whatever he was, must be after Gunn as well – and she wasn't gonna be able to protect him very well out on the street. _Like I'll be any better inside,_ she thought.

"I was- uh- just lookin' for a place, to, you know, hang- er, crash." She started, suddenly feeling her Sunnydale home and nice well funded high school were leaving her floundering. _Might as well be wearing a damn diploma round my neck_ she thought angrily. "Cos I'm – I mean, I've got nowhere to, you know, crash, and – cos my parents threw me out cos I did, erm, crack." She finished, sure her face was burning. She squirmed, as she stared into unblinking eyes betraying a mixture of amusement and derision. After what seemed a lifetime, he muttered under his breath and swung the door aside to admit her. He followed her in, and the two walked in silence along a poorly lit corridor sloping down to what Dawn supposed must be the basement of the building. Behind another strong metal door was a well lit room, warmer than the alleyway outside, but she suspected due more to the number of people than the shabby electric heater patched in the corner, a dog-eared cable running up the wall and into a crudely knocked hole in the ceiling. The well armed group that had been with Gunn were now spread out around the basement, leaning on water pipes, gathering round the small window for ventilation.

"Tommy. Yo, Tommy!" her escort called. One of the group by the window broke away and sauntered over, giving Dawn an approving look up and down before answering.

"Hey, if this is to make up for the other night, man you should piss me off more often."

"Sorry man, I'd love to say it with flowers, but she jus' lookin' for a place to sleep," the lookout replied. "Not too safe out there after dark, 'specially when you know they gonna be looking for some payback for G's 'Take Back The Night' bit. Whad'ya say, we got space?"

Tommy grinned and stuck out a friendly hand. Dawn took it, a little unsure.

"I'm Tommy an' I'm just messin with ya, we'll fix ya up for the night," he said, gesturing to the room with a slight bow, "anywhere you can fin' six feet of floor, sweetheart."

Tommy and the lookout disappeared up the corridor, Dawn catching Tommy's laugh as they turned out of sight. Her face burned again, and she looked around for a spot amongst the sprawling bodies. Spotting Gunn sitting on a beaten up chair in a far corner, still deep in discussion with the curly haired girl, she picked her way towards him and slipped down against the wall where she could keep him in view.

* * *

"I'm tellin' you, G, you don' stop this, one of us is gonna end up dead. Or worse." The curly haired girl was saying insistently. Gunn laughed disbelievingly.

"Alonna, Alonna, never gonna happen. OK?" He said, taking her comfortingly by the shoulder.

 _Alonna_. The name struck home in Dawn's mind – _Of course. His sister_. She felt a tinge of sadness watching her passionate face. She'd never known her, but there was something incredibly morbid watching her here alive, knowing her fate.

"We're doin' good work here, little sis, gotta stop jus' reactin', take the fight to them and clear out our streets. We can't do the whole city, but we can do good _here,_ " Gunn continued. "And we're careful – we don't get drawn in where we can't handle it, an' we make sure we're bathin' in daylight 'fore the vamps get all revengeful."

Alonna didn't seem convinced, but she obviously wasn't prepared to argue anymore. She accepted a hug from her brother, but Dawn could see the worry still in her brow. She slipped lower down the wall, trying to come up with a plan, second guess her unseen enemy.

"You cold?" The question came from next to her – she looked along the wall and met the eyes of a man, intensely blue from a dark complexion. She couldn't even hazard a guess at his age – older than her – but still, little sign of ageing, his hair a deep brown and the sleeves of his thin brown jacket displaying bulging upper arms. She felt herself blush inexplicably and she flicked her eyes away.

"I'm OK." She replied. "Thanks." She added hurriedly.

"If you say so," the man's voice, sounding slightly amused. Uninvited, he shuffled closer. Dawn's first instinct was to move away, react defensively, but somehow she felt no danger. He didn't really look like one of Gunn's 'crew', and she was suddenly curious.

"Don't really look like you belong," he said kindly, "No offence."

A slight smile flickered on Dawn's face.

"I was gonna say the same about you," she replied. A slight silence followed, both waiting for the other to answer.

"So, mafia boss, ninja bride or just a clichéd overbearing father?" He asked.

"What?"

"Who you're hiding from," he explained, a charming smile spreading across his face. "I usually find it's one of those three."

Dawn laughed slightly. "The ninja. Definitely," she replied, grateful that she wouldn't have to try her stumbling cover story again. "You?" He didn't answer, but had extended a hand, and she took it, noting the strength of his grip.

"My name's Colin," he offered.

"Dawn," she answered. _Damn. Why not just wear a name badge, double-oh-dumbass,_ she scolded herself. Then immediately laughed inwardly at her paranoia. _I'm probably barely out of fifth grade at this point, who's gonna recognise me?_

"You know our hosts?" Colin asked, gesturing towards Gunn and Alonna, now examining the contents of some large holdalls some distance away. "You seemed to be upset by their little spat before."

"No, I don't," Dawn said, a little too quickly, but caught herself and finished more calmly, "They just seemed... she seemed very worried."

Colin's face registered concern.

"Could you hear what they were saying? Anything we should _all_ be worried about?"

"Oh no, I'm sure it's fine, she just was worried about them, you know, the guys with the weapons," Dawn said, trying to sound reassuring, "pissing off the wrong fang-boy and them coming looking for some payback."

"Well that certainly isn't gonna keep me awake in mind-numbing terror tonight," Colin replied, his half smile not completely convinced.

"Oh we'll be fine, Gunn will – I mean, that guy, I think his name's 'Gunn', he, erm, looks like he could keep us safe..." Dawn trailed off, wincing at her feeble reassurance. _I know he can, 'cos I know him years from now_ , she wanted to say, _but I can hardly explain that..._

"Sure. He looks quite the street fighter," Colin said, more confidently than Dawn felt her encouragement deserved, "besides, from what I hear a vampire can't get in where they're not invited."

"Yeah, right, they can't get into any private home," Dawn confirmed, cheered by the thought, "Of course I dunno if this would be a private home, I mean people live here but it's really more of a public basement really-" _Stop talking_ , she thought, and glanced across at Colin, who thankfully didn't seem to be listening to her ramble. From the bags, Gunn and his people had brought bread, cheetos, bananas and Mountain Dew, a meal Dawn suspected was motivated more by the angle of the 7-11 cameras than an unusual taste in recipes. As she watched people clamber up from the floor to take their share of the food, she was struck by a sudden thought.

"Colin? How come you know about vampire invites and stuff?"

He paused for a moment and then looked at her, his eye twinkling.

"How do you?" He replied. _Right_ , Dawn thought. _Dumb question_. Without another word, she pulled herself up from the hard floor and headed for the food, careful to avoid drawing Gunn's attention.

* * *

The aftertaste of warm Mountain Dew still bothered Dawn as she lay on a thin blanket in the corner of the room – the only noise in the room now was the shuffling and coughing of the other people who had laid down to sleep. She could see Gunn, wrapped in a faded camouflage blanket near the exit, and noticed a crossbow leaning on a pipe near his head. She assessed her own meagre supply of weapons, the knife still badly concealed on her person, and the small crossbow stuffed clumsily under the blanket – it seemed likely to raise more questions than she felt like answering, and so was better out of sight. _Ditto on the big blue crystal_. Somehow, using these, she was meant to save Gunn's future. It would have helped if she wasn't alone. _Wes and Gunn._ The subject that she'd been resolutely avoiding swam into her mind. It was completely possible they were safe, back in the Wolfram  & Hart lobby, facing Angel's angry shouting. Perhaps she was even back there too, returned from her successful mission right to the moment she'd left. Wasn't that always how it happened in time travel movies? But a dozen other 'what if's seemed desperate to crowd out the image.

She was used to the feeling of deep seated worry, tinged with guilt at her powerlessness to help. How often had she felt it when Buffy faced danger and unfavourable odds on a nightly basis back in High School, when she'd been 'too young' to help? The same familiar feeling would appear even now, seated behind her desk watching Spike and Angel heading out to save the day. But this was a little different – first, she was in no small peril herself, and then there was the image she couldn't quite dispel that Wesley was facing a T-Rex. She shifted uncomfortably on the hard floor, barely softened by the threadbare blanket. She turned over to look over at Colin, and saw only a discarded blanket.

Alarmed, she sat bolt upright and peered around the room in the pale flickering light. He wasn't anywhere in view. _Relax_ , she tried to tell herself. _He's just gone to the bathroom_. But a pounding sense of unease remained, and the cold of the basement seemed to intensify as she waited.

Fifteen minutes later, she had convinced herself he hadn't just stepped out. _Why couldn't I just keep my mouth shut?_ Dawn asked herself angrily, chewing on her bottom lip hard enough that she tasted blood. _"No, I couldn't hear them." How hard is that? Course, the sensible thing to say is always "the experienced vampire hunters think we'll be torn apart in our beds."_ It seemed obvious what had happened – because of what she'd told him, he thought he'd be safer outside. Outside on the streets, where you were in enough danger without even meeting a vampire. _I shouldn't even_ be _here,_ she thought _, but because I am he's going to die. I'm so great at this job I don't even_ need _a demon to screw things up._

Silently, she swung the crossbow strap over her shoulder, and, checking her knife was still in place in her boot, she climbed to her feet and headed for the exit. She stepped past Gunn, sleeping soundly under his blanket. _Don't die while I'm gone_ , she told him silently, and headed down the alley towards the street.

* * *

The night was colder now, and Dawn pulled her jacket around her as she picked her way carefully through the shadows, avoiding the harsh circles of streetlight which would give away her presence and, worse, that she was very much alone. She jumped, her heart in her mouth, at a clatter from behind her, only to see a rat scuttling away over a rusty can. She smiled, she hated rats, but the sight calmed her. _Just a dark alley. You grew up in Sunnydale, for God's sake._ Trying to breathe normally, she turned back to the road, and her calm evaporated as quickly as it had come – a gang had entered the alley, men and women of different ages, showing no fear of the darkness in their confident stride. Dawn, hoping she was still covered by shadow, crouched into a doorway and watched them approach – the streetlamps cast a bizarre silhouette on their faces, contorted into demonic snarls. _Vampires_ , she thought. _Perfect_. Hoping this street gang didn't have Angel's keenly primed senses, she tried not to breathe as they passed, watching for any sign of discovery. She counted twelve of them now, the closest to her wearing a bright red t-shirt and dark jeans, with long unkempt hair falling untidily on his shoulders. But the gang seemed oblivious to her – these vampires weren't hunting, they were - _invading_. It struck her in an instant where they were headed - towards the unsuspecting kids in the basement hideout. A moment of panic – they were between her and the door, no way to warn Gunn, no way to get them out. _Am I even meant to help?_ The uncertainty burned in Dawn's mind. _If Gunn – my Gunn – had made it, I could just ask "Hey, were you attacked by a vamp biker gang oh I dunno, a dozen years ago? Survive all right? Any mysterious yet weirdly familiar brunette help you out?",_ she thought, but as things were, she was blind.

In a fraction of a second, she decided to act. The vampires had paused outside the hideout, perhaps looking for the best entrance, and Dawn took advantage of their distraction to steal across the alley to a dumpster on the other side. As quietly as possible she swung the crossbow from her shoulder and fitted the two bolts into the string. She could make out the opening between the buildings, directly ahead of her. But a vampire, dressed like a costume store Neo, blocked her way. Taking a deep breath, she steadied her aim, trying to remember the very long list of pointers Giles had given her about shooting these things straight – why could she only remember the story he'd told, laughing to himself all the while, about the taxi driver and the conjuring orb? Her time was ticking away, and she squeezed the trigger. One of the bolts flew across the alley and hit the trenchcoated vampire squarely through the heart. She pulled the trigger again and the second bolt fired, cutting unhindered trough the swirling cloud of dust where he had stood, and into the opening which concealed the basement door. She heard the thunk as it hit the concrete wall and rebounded to the floor. _Please be paying attention,_ she thought, as the other vamps swung to face her, two approaching her, snarling venomously. She stumbled backwards, fumbling to reload the crossbow, and brought it up just in time to fire it squarely into the stomach of the approaching vamp. He growled in pain, but the bolt had missed his heart and he kept coming. Dawn tripped over, her hand grasping for a weapon amongst the broken packing crates that littered the alley. Then with shouts and the clang of the metal door, Gunn and his fighters burst into the alley – in the initial surprise the two vamps on Dawn took crossbow bolts to the chest and vanished into dust. She pulled herself up to see the rest fighting fiercely with Gunn's crew.

Gunn himself was fighting a vampire with short cropped black hair, striking him with the butt of his crossbow, and sweeping his legs to take him down. He grabbed a stake, but as Dawn ducked an oncoming vampire herself, his opponent flipped backwards onto his feet, kicking Gunn in the head as he did so. The two dissolved into the mêlée as Dawn fought to get close to him. Grabbing a piece of packing crate, she broke it in two on her knee, creating two sharply pointed weapons. A vampire, a woman with a red leather coat, was heading for her now. Dawn ducked and weaved as she attacked, mistiming it slightly and catching part of the knee strike in her shoulder blade. Wincing at the sudden pain, she stumbled, putting down a hand to keep herself upright. The vampire, spinning round, grabbed her from behind and pulled her to her feet, baring its fangs as it pulled her neck to the side. Pivoting on her heel and shoving with all her strength, Dawn forced the vampire back against the wall of a building, her face turning to surprise and then horror as one of Dawn's makeshift stakes was driven through her sternum and she exploded into dust.

Coughing through the veil of dust, Dawn pushed forwards to where she had last seen Gunn. He was on his feet again, but the vampire had found a short sword and was squaring off grinning maliciously – _Gunn's own weapon?_ She thought, pushing towards him a little more panicked, _No_ , she decided, _he'd never let that happen – had to be one of his guy's_. In one motion, the vampire swung the sword towards Gunn's head as Dawn crashed into the side of him, sending the blade spinning out of control. She heard a shout from Gunn and he hit the ground behind her. Staking the black haired vampire almost without a thought, she pulled aside a crate to see Gunn already rising to return to battle – he had what looked like a deep cut over his eye, which was leaking blood down his cheek, but otherwise seemed uninjured. The two of them locked eyes, and Gunn smiled at her – for a split second, she thought that he recognised her, so familiar was the smile, but she knew this was a different Charles Gunn – his deep-set jaw and slightly faded eyes spoke of too many nights like this one. Before she could even think to say something friendly, or reassuring, he was back in the fight – but it was almost over – two vampires were already on the run, a few stray crossbow bolts chasing them down the street, and the last that remained were no match for their well armed adversaries. Dawn ducked into an alcove and slipped down behind a dumpster, breathing heavily. She slipped the blue gemstone out of her pocket, and watched it pulse with light. _Is that it? History saved?_ She wondered. It seemed too easy – perhaps Gunn was in greater danger that she just hadn't spotted? But then she heard Gunn's voice, cutting across the night, "Anyone see a girl here, brunette? Didn't look much, but she went all Pink Ranger on the vamps." _He_ may _mean me_ , Dawn thought, and hurriedly pulled her knife far enough out of her boot to reopen the small cut on her finger. Pressing her finger against the jewel, she drew it across its width, and immediately she felt nauseous and confused – the world around her shimmered. Stepping out from behind the dumpster she found herself watching the shadows of the fight from moments before, vampires and humans moving like wisps of smoke amongst the ripples around her. Just as she had before, she spotted a trail through the distorted world before her – _did that mean whoever was behind this had already left?_ Trying to keep control of her senses, she walked forwards, following the trail like a path through the woods, dozens of scenes, places, people and snippets of conversation flashing past, that hotel again, a motorcycle, a familiar library, a rustic old manor house in sprawling grounds.

* * *

Suddenly she felt the cold air of dusk and her vision cleared. She was on her knees again, but a softer landing this time – well kept grass, on which dew was already beginning to form. Glancing around to see if anyone had seen her, she saw the lawn was empty – _this traveller is pretty good at keeping hidden_ , she thought – she suspected he had a lot more control over his movements in the vortex than she did. The house at the end of the lawn – _No, not house – mansion_ , she corrected herself, loomed imposingly out of the gathering darkness. Lights burned in the ground floor windows, and a pair of headlights were creeping up the drive in the distance. Stealing into the shadows to avoid the approaching car, Dawn pressed herself against the wall and peered into the windows – the entrance hall looked clear, and opening the door softly, she stepped inside. The house was warm, uncomfortably so, and decorated how Dawn had always imagined Buckingham Palace was – plush furnishings, ornate carvings, and a roaring fire in the grate – too warm for the season, but she suspected it burned there all year round. Over the reception desk with its antique bell was an elaborate coat of arms bearing a Latin motto and a plaque where the words "Royal Academy of Watchers" was inscribed in flowing cursive. _Watchers_ , she thought. _Wesley's past. Wes would have been kind of useful now._

On the board beside the reception desk was an array of photographs, mostly staff members in academic gowns, and one bespectacled face smiling awkwardly from the top left, as if the camera flash had startled him. Although much younger, unscarred and free of stubble, the faces was unmistakably Wesley's. Below his picture the words 'Head Boy' were inscribed in gold. She grinned, and for a moment considered taking the picture with her, but the double doors on the other side of the hall swung back, and the subject of the photo strode though, a pompously important look on his face, followed by a stream of students, all around her own age, heading for the corridor to the left or the stairs, creaking under the sudden weight. They were all dressed in dark blue jackets over a very traditional English school uniform, even though almost all of them had to be twenty or older. No-one seemed at all interested in a strange girl dressed in street clothes – _street clothes about 20 years before their time_ , she thought to herself – and they ignored her completely.

Wesley seemed keen on organising proceedings, and everyone else seemed equally keen on ignoring him. Dawn watched from the reception desk as the last of the students filed out from the double doors, and Wesley, his important look faded to one of slight disappointment, followed the crowd down the corridor. Silence fell again in the entrance hall, and Dawn weighed her options – _probably best to stick with Wes_ , she thought, and headed toward the corridor, wooden panelled with an echoing floor. Although dozens of students had passed through just moments before it felt very empty and if it weren't for the decorative lamps burning on the walls and the impeccably polished brass she would have sworn no-one had been down it in years. Darting past an open door she saw into a classroom, furnished with scuffed wooden desks – a group of students sat around one, on which was a display of crystals of a variety of colours – a dark red one was glowing, sparking gently onto the floor. _A real Hogwarts, this place_ , Dawn thought, and boldly decided to try some other rooms – the first two doors she tried were classrooms, like the first but empty and unlit. The next door had a crack of light under it. Turning the handle as noiselessly as she could, Dawn pushed the door open. Inside, the desks had been pushed against the wall, to clear a space in the middle of the floor. There, a ring of blood red powder, several feet across, had been poured and Dawn felt the air full of static, as if before a thunderstorm. Standing over the ring with his back to her was a student, his blue jacket strewn aside on the desk.

"Oh, sorry, I-" she started, and then she was silenced by a sudden recognition – the student turned, a smile playing across his face – the same smile she'd seen in the basement of Gunn's basement just a few hours earlier. He was older than he should be for that uniform, and his intensely blue eyes seemed to burn into her.

"Colin!" She gasped. In a split second all of the earlier encounter flooded back, that charming first encounter, worrying about him, slipping out to find him – suddenly all replaced by a flash of anger. "It was _you_ wasn't it? This demon, sorcerer guy I've been following through this whole crazy memory lane? You sent those vampires to Gunn's hideout – that's where you went!"

Colin laughed, not the warm friendly sound of the Los Angeles basement, but a cold laugh which made Dawn shiver despite the warmth.

"Dawn Summers. You were pretty helpful for a bit there, shame you had to go and ruin Mr. Gunn's appointment with fate. Not to worry though, plenty more fish in the shootin' barrel."

"I never did tell you my last name." Dawn replied. Colin seemed even more amused.

"Oh I know a lot about you, young Summers – after all, the part of your life that isn't an elaborate fiction is – what? four years long? Not much to learn." He gestured around him. "We're seventeen years in your past – you're a tiny crawling infant somewhere over the pond, right?" He laughed again. "Wrong. You don't even exist – your parents are raising Buffy right now, all three blissfully unaware of your existence. And they'll stay that way for another thirteen years. You see, the monks could mess with memory, change what people _think_ happened. But my dear, I can change what _did_ happen." He slapped closed the heavy leather-bound book he was holding, and in a shower of light, the ring of powder vanished, leaving a circle burnt into the floor, and inside a pedestal, gleaming gold, with a green flame burning inside.

"What are you doing here? What are you gonna do to Wesley?" Dawn asked, enraged.

"This place reeks of magic, some of the most powerful mortals who have ever lived have passed through these halls," Colin replied. "But for Wesley, it's going to be that power that is his undoing." He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the pedestal. "The magics, their own weapon, will be their undoing."

"Where's Wesley?" Dawn asked through gritted teeth.

His eyes twinkling, Colin pointed upwards. Dawn followed his finger to the bare ceiling, and then looked back to his self satisfied grin.

"Senior common room is always full about this time at night. Young Wes does so like to control the room. He's Head Boy, you know? Daddy must be so proud. If you run, you might be able to warn them, convince them you're not crazy long enough to get them over half a mile away. You've got," Colin glanced at the clock on the wall, "About five minutes."

Before Dawn could answer, the door crashed open behind her, revealing the young Wesley, which she was pleased to notice seemed to shock Colin. _So he can't predict everything_ , she thought. But immediately she wished Wesley had gone almost anywhere else – she was even less likely to save him less than six feet from whatever it was Colin was conjuring with that flame.

"You're not a student at this Academy!" Wesley's indignant voice came from the door. Noticing Dawn, he looked a bit more flustered, but added "And neither are you!"

"What gave it away?" Colin asked, his voice still laced with cold amusement.

"I am head boy of the Academy of Watchers, in tune with the forces of natural magics, I could sense your power from afar," Wesley started pompously, "Also, I heard you talking."

With admirable bravery, or perhaps foolhardiness, Wesley grabbed a beautiful ceremonial sword from the wall, and held it as if beginning a fencing match. Dawn would have put a large wager on this being his first real fight, ever. Colin reached behind him, and a sword materialised in his hand, the green flame reflecting in its shining blade.

"En Guarde." Wesley said nervously but a little theatrically, tapping the ground with the end of his sword. Charging forward, he swung and thrust the sword at Colin, who easily fended him off, one handed, barely moving his feet. Dawn looked around desperately for a weapon to help Wesley, but Colin ducked a swing from Wesley and threw something towards her. The object, a tiny glass vial, broke at her feet and suddenly she was engulfed in purple smoke, the crackle of electricity ran up her spine and she couldn't move – rooted to the spot, she could only watch the fight before her, through eyes that couldn't blink, rapidly watering from the smoke.

Wesley was hopelessly outmatched – every thrust was countered, every swing expertly blocked – but Colin didn't seem interested in besting Wesley in a swordfight – he kicked Wesley back, and poured a small amount of powder into the flame, which turned deep scarlet and began popping sparks. Wesley charged again with a yell, and Colin skilfully dodged around him, bringing the hilt of his sword down on Wesley's head, sending him to the ground, where he lay still. _Hopefully just dazed_ , Dawn thought, as she willed her muscles to move, to break free from the unseen binding. Colin threw his own sword aside, and it clattered to the ground by her feet. Without a word, he raised his hand, his blue eyes swam a deep, midnight black, and the room spun as a portal opened in front of him. He leapt forward into it, and it swirled closed behind him. The room was rapidly filling with acrid smoke from the sparking flame, and Dawn still couldn't move. Straining her eyes she made out the clock on the far wall. Four of those five minutes had already passed, and the flame in the pedestal was looking angrier than ever.

 _To Be Continued..._

* * *

6.03: Hindsight, of Angel: Still Falling, written by Monotone and edited by Out For Bloody Summer, is original work copyright 2009. Please seek permission from the authors before distributing, and only do so on the condition that the original text and this notice are intact and no charge or fee of any description is levied for it. "Angel" and all related properties are trademarks of and copyright 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Telecision, and David Greenwalt Productions. The authors are not connected in any way with the copyright owners. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by this non-commercial exercise. All characters and events depicted here are entirely ficticious, which is probably a good thing. Hope you enjoyed the show, all comments welcome, but please see the extended setup blog for our policies on replying. Join us next time for Episode 4.


	5. 604: A Fleeting Glimpse

_Now's about the time I usually get rescued_ _._ The thought flashed through Dawn's head as she stood, immobilised by Colin's spell, her eyes streaming from the pungent smoke that filled the room. She could make out Wesley, still sprawled on the floor, and the pedestal, its flames leaping ever higher and showering the room in sparks. _Now should be when Angel, or Gunn, or Wesley should come crashing through that door._ But Angel and Gunn were half a world away, and the only Wesley she had to hand appeared to need a decent dose of rescuing himself. Feeling utterly helpless, Dawn felt the tears from her burning eyes running down her cheeks. She clenched her fist in frustrated anger.

 _Hey, wait a sec_ , she thought, _how'd I do that?_

She tried to open her fist again – it was very stiff, but she could just about force her fingers to spread. A flash of hope – it seemed Colin's spell was weakening without him here to maintain it. But it had taken a great effort just to move her fingers, and time was running out. Willing her eyes to move, she peered around, compelling herself to blink to clear the soot. A glint of reflected flame drew her gaze to Colin's discarded sword, still lying at her feet. Glancing up, she saw the green fire dancing in the pedestal, filling the room with smoke but still eerily, unnaturally cold. Rather than scorching the ceiling above, the fire seemed almost to be drawing heat from the room. The light was now so intense that by the time she was able to move her eyes away she felt the image burnt into her vision.

Dawn drew back her right foot, an inch, two. Praying she wouldn't topple straight over, she took her foot back far enough to raise the heel from the floor. Focusing so strongly she could feel the blood pounding in her temples, she ordered her leg to kick forwards – if she could speak, she'd have screamed it. Breaking free of its invisible bounds, her leg snapped forward, and made contact with the hilt of the sword, sending a shot of pain into her foot. The sword skidded forward across the polished wooden floor, spinning towards the pedestal. Just as it looked as if it was going to miss, the end of the blade impacted the base, and the glistening golden bowl on top rocked. Almost in slow motion, it teetered and, its balance lost, fell from the top of the pedestal, and smashed on the floor – the dented golden bowl rolled away, sending sparking powders across the room – but the flame was gone. Instantly, Dawn's binding spell was broken too, and the sudden freedom made her stumble forwards. On the ground, Wesley groaned slightly, and raised his hand to the back of his head. Cheered to see him alive, Dawn also became suddenly very aware of the long list of unanswerable questions he would have as soon as his head cleared. Giving the now lifeless golden bowl a slight kick, she was satisfied the danger from Colin's spell had passed, and she pulled the sangreal from her pocket once again. Reopening the cut on her finger, she drew the thin trail of red blood across its surface, and the now familiar feeling engulfed her. The world became blurred around her, as she walked towards the clearly defined, obviously fresh path through the rippling waves made by Colin's portal only minutes earlier. The now familiar swirling shapes hurtled past, and her head swam once again with snippets of memories, like watching a dozen movies at once, none of them quite in focus. She caught sight of a jungle, a flash of a long white corridor, the drone of an airplane screaming overhead.

* * *

(Still Falling Title Sequence, well worth watching, viewable here: Youtube URL / watch?v=0u3u6sR4rbc)

As abruptly as they came, the images vanished and Dawn stumbled, but kept on her feet this time. Reaching out to steady herself, she was glad she hadn't fallen this time – right in front of her was a long table, covered with a white table cloth and laden with a meagre selection of finger food. The table wobbled dangerously under her hand and she snatched it away nervously, glancing around to see if anyone had seen her dramatic entrance. But clearly whatever was going on in the next room hadn't made it to the buffet table yet – a pair of thick, murky brown curtains which didn't quite meet in the middle separated the quiet area where she was from a bustling throng engaged in what Harmony would call 'working the room'.

Peering through the gap in the curtains, Dawn could see dozens of people, all talking excitedly to each other, and all dressed rather formally, suits and fairly expensive dresses, which clashed somewhat with the shabby decor of the room. Looking down at her own clothes, dirty from her night in a basement, grass stained on one knee from her encounter with an English lawn, and speckled with soot from magical smoke, she realised this was one crowd she wasn't going to be able to mingle in. The clumsily concealed crossbow didn't help either. Sighing, she walked to the other end of the curtain and slid through against the wall, walking as confidently and surreptitiously as she could to the opposite end of the hall where a dilapidated stage sat, carpeted in a course brown weave that had seen better days. Perching on the top step, Dawn tried to appear as invisible as possible, very aware that she was already drawing stares, and scanned the crowd in the room. _What am I doing here? And for that matter, where's here?_ Her eyes fell on an empty noticeboard on the wall. Above it, in floral cursive, were the words Boston Harbour Bar  & Conference Center. _Well, that's half the answer_ , she thought, looking around, _but who was in Boston... early 90s, by_ that _haircut?_ Her eyes passed the window and suddenly focused on a familiar profile. A woman who had been standing with her back to Dawn had turned slightly, and beneath a mass of blonde hair still suffering from the age of perms, was Dr. Coral Bowman. She'd only met Coral recently, her and Gunn the only members of Angel's team she'd never met before heading to LA herself (or at least met before they became god kings of hell on Earth), but clearly Colin already considered her important. _But what's he changed?_ Dawn couldn't see Colin anywhere in the crowded room, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could stay before the staff with trays, already throwing her suspicious looks, decided to call someone large and armed to ask questions she'd rather not answer. Trying not to look as out of place as she felt, Dawn strode towards a set of double doors and found herself in the corridor outside. The sudden calm was a relief – there were only a few stragglers here, heading outside for a smoke or, she suspected, hiding from the social minefield inside. _Weird there's no-one on a cell phone_ , she thought absent-mindedly as she pressed on down the corridor towards the stairwell. As she went, she passed a burly looking man in military dress uniform, who was addressing a much younger man dressed in a faded suit.

"South America is the main target," the military man, who was sporting single general's stars on his shoulders, was saying. "I can't say where precisely, obviously that's all under wraps at the moment and to be frank with you Bill, we simply won't know until we get there. But wherever it is, we're going to need an extensive civilian support arm. And that means scientists with your levels of expertise."

Something about the conversation gave Dawn pause, and she stopped short of the bend in the corridor, leaning idly against the wall and straining her ears to hear. _The military, South America, scientific 'expertise'. That's a bit too Agent Finn to be a coincidence_ , she thought. Coral had come to Wolfram & Hart from the LA branch of The Initiative, and Dawn's Sunnydale upbringing gave her a pretty good idea what the military would be interested in, in South America.

"Well there are a number of people here today who I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to you, General," Bill was replying. "Rob Daley is the foremost expert on, ah, sub-terrestrials in the tri-state, and Coral, ah, Dr. Bowman, has some fascinating theories on biochemical approaches to... threat containment."

 _I'm good_ , Dawn thought, pleased with herself, trying to pretend that a fortuitous passing in the corridor counted as detective work. _So this is the day Coral gets her job in the army's demon-meddling club, which will lead her to Angel's doorstep once Spike barges in and smashes up the place. Colin must be here to stop that_ , she reasoned, _but how? Kill the General? Or go after Coral herself?_ She hoped he wouldn't try to take Coral out in front of all those people in the conference room, but events at the Academy didn't leave her with the impression that he cared much about collateral damage.

She turned the corner, trying to think of the best way to approach it – _fire alarm? Get everyone out of the building and sort it out there?_ She wondered. Didn't seem a great plan, that could mess up a crucial first meeting as badly as Colin ever could. She glanced up, and came to a sudden stop. Ahead of her, by the bank of payphones on the wall, was Colin, still wearing the remnants of an Academy uniform. He was just replacing the receiver onto the second phone from the end, and caught her eye as she stared at him. His face split into a grin, and when he spoke there it was as if greeting an old friend.

"Dawn! You _are_ resourceful aren't you? I didn't see you escaping my little spell at the Earl Grey Academy, tell me, how is the Head Boy?"

"Just fine, your spell didn't work."

"A pity. Your doing again, I assume?" Colin asked, still smiling. "Perhaps I was a touch... obvious with that approach, wouldn't win points for subtlety. I think you might find this little attack," he continued, gesturing around him, "a little more surgical. I did hope you'd follow me onwards though, I'm growing quite accustomed to your pretty face showing up to save the day." Turning, he began to walk towards the exit. Dawn felt a faint wind that didn't seem to have a source, and knew he was about to open another vortex.

"Colin!" She shouted after him. She didn't know what she expected him to do – lay out his evil plans like a co-operative comic book villain? But she needed something else to go on if she was going to figure out what he'd done to Coral. He stopped, and turned. He was no longer grinning but his face still shone with barely contained amusement.

"If we're going to keep this dance up, you should probably stop calling me 'Colin', after all I made that up on the spot, sounded kind of trustworthy, don't you think?"

"What should I call you then?" Dawn asked; she couldn't say she particularly cared, but it seemed wise to keep him talking for as long as she could. Maybe turn the conversation around to those evil plans...

"Well names are such a - _human_ thing," he replied. "In my line of work, you tend to amass a fair few. But my first was Quonz. Quonz Al'Brecht."

Normally, Dawn might have giggled at the unusual name, but somehow not much seemed funny at that moment.

"Quonz, what-" She began, but he interrupted.

"I'm going to give you a piece of advice – that gem –" he pointed to her pocket, and Dawn couldn't help but wonder how he knew what was in there. "can take you home, too. I suggest you make use of it. Don't follow me any further; from here on you're less likely to enjoy the setting." When Dawn met his eye, the smile was gone – the eyes were steely cold, and she felt herself shiver involuntarily.

Without another word, Colin – _Quonz_ – turned and strode out of the exit door into the stairwell, a flash of light and a wind catching the double doors the telltale signs that he had already conjured another vortex and disappeared. Dawn found herself staring at the door as it banged closed, any sense of victory from saving Gunn and Wesley completely ebbed away. Turning, she began to walk slowly back towards the hall. If she was going to await whatever catastrophe would prevent Coral and the General meeting, she might as well stick near them. As she passed the row of payphones, she couldn't help wondering who Quonz had been phoning - it had to be related.

Rounding the corner, she got her answer. Another man in military uniform, although much less covered in metal and embroidery had approached the general and snapped smartly to attention. The general broke off from his conversation with Bill and bent his head slightly as the young man wearing captain's bars whispered into his ear, handing him a note. He straightened up, scanned the note, and Dawn thought she saw a flicker of concern in his face. Looking back to the nervously waiting scientist, he spoke quickly.

"Bill, I've received a call with important orders, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this short. We must talk again soon." He pulled on a pair of brown leather gloves as he spoke, and grasped Bill's hand in a brief handshake, already beginning to move away towards the exit. The captain fell into step behind him.

"Shall I – er – call you – ah call your office about meeting Rob and Coral then, general?" Bill called after him awkwardly.

"Sure, set that up." Came the general's distracted reply. Bill didn't look too confident that he'd ever hear from the general again, and Dawn couldn't help but sympathise. The general had reached the stairs by this point, tucking his hat beneath his arm, and she racked her brains, desperate for an idea to not only keep him from leaving, but manoeuvre him back into the conference room for a very vital conversation.

Moving to the window, Dawn looked down into the parking lot two floors below. There was no military transport there, _he must be taking his own car_ , she thought, and wild plans went through her head – she could try to make up a story to get him to stay – _a story to get a high ranking military officer to ignore an officer. Great idea, s_ he scolded herself, _why don't I just go slash his tyres too, cos the army only have the one car_. No ideas had come to her that could get the general back into the room behind her, and she saw her target himself opening one of the double doors to the parking lot and striding out into the sun. His aide had disappeared, and he wasn't heading for a car, but to the small rank of motorbikes parked against the wall. Opening the seat compartment of one, he pulled out a set of leathers and turned back toward the building, vanishing through another door to change.

Suddenly, a memory swam into her head – Coral, stepping out of the lift in the Wolfram & Hart lobby, dressed in an eye-catching set of motorcycle leathers, Harmony sneering over her desk and popping her gum. Without another thought, she was heading down the stairs, and before she had any real idea of what she intended to do, she found herself beside the bike in the parking lot. Crouching down, she looked over the bike desperately, painfully aware that her bike knowledge extended to which way was forwards, and that Spike used to own one that her 16 year old self had thought was pretty cool. Neither of these facts seemed all that helpful at that moment – Dawn slipped her hand underneath the casing and took hold of some wires. Pausing just long enough to hope they weren't the brakes, she pulled hard, and felt the ends give way. Trying to wipe the oil from her hand on the inside of her jeans pocket, she slipped back inside, and was back at the window in time to see the general return to the parking lot. She watched as he swung himself into the saddle, pulled on his helmet, and tried to start the engine. Nothing happened. Releasing a breath she hadn't noticed she was holding, Dawn smiled and turned back towards the conference room behind her.

Before she reached the door, a young girl in a purple conference center uniform and sporting vividly pink dyed hair stepped out, and stood aside for Dawn to pass. Sensing an opportunity to avoid an awkward and premature first meeting with Coral, Dawn touched her lightly on the arm to tear her attention from her drinks order list. Leaning in, she whispered conspiratorially, "The general might need a hand in the parking lot – could you ask Dr Bowman to go down and see if she can help?"

Dawn hoped the girl would obey without asking any of the questions that were screaming in their patent obviousness, and, although her face betrayed a flash of uncertainty, she muttered something affirmative and backed into the room. Dawn moved back to the window, a withdrawn observer, and a few moments later the furiously blonde head of Coral Bowman passed her on her way to the stairs. Alone in the corridor, Dawn stared down at the car park, where Coral and the general were talking over the bike. _I've done all I can_ , she reasoned – _hopefully, I just needed to get them within 10 feet of each other_. Pulling the gemstone from her pocket, Dawn again felt the world evaporate around her as she followed the path Quonz had made. A roar of flame on her left startled her, and she saw a glimpse of a man, large and muscular, with his fists engulfed in fire. A hushed conversation in a shaded alleyway, a blonde haired plastic mannequin exploded on impact, another white corridor, this one filled with cells.

* * *

She lurched as her feet hit solid ground again, and shook her head to clear the colours swimming in front of her eyes. She looked around quickly, finding herself to be in the classic image of an abandoned warehouse, complete with a few large, brutish-looking men moving around on the other side of the room. _With teeth_ , she was willing to bet. Quickly ducking behind some of the boxes stacked nearby, she struggled to keep calm, knowing that vampires responded to a racing pulse like she did to freshly cooked waffles. Just as she was about to try to take a peek, she caught two voices she knew straight away.

"I so want us to go to Paris. The night we met, you totally said we could."

"That's because I thought you were a drunken hallucination. Imagine my disappointment."

Dawn had to clench her teeth to stifle the urge to laugh. Some things never changed, it seemed, remembering Spike and Harmony having a similar argument that very morning. It did creep her out slightly to realise that although all of Spike's relationships had been based on constant fighting and tension, that was the one that had lasted. She wondered just how much affection he did have for Harmony, and whether he really did mean every nasty thing he said.

"Well it sure beats hanging out in these sleazy warehouses looking for that Gem you're, like, always going on about. I had more fun when I was breathing."

Dawn felt around behind her dimly lit cover, finding a small gap in the boxes that she could peer through. She counted five vamps, mostly lounging around, Spike standing in the middle of the floor with his hands on his hips, and Harmony leaning back against a table at one end, pouting. _No sign of Quonz yet_ , she thought, casting her eye around the dingy warehouse again. _What does that mean, anyway, key to a different door?_

"You heard the librarian as well as I did, Harm, the answer is in a book here somewhere."

"Well _maybe_ you shouldn't have killed him until he told you where exactly."

Spike threw up his hands in frustration and started pacing the floor. This left Dawn feeling rather conflicted, facing the major issue that although he was her boss, and her sister's ex, and had done things she had hated him for, and was now about her only friend in a strange new city, pissed-off, impatient Spike was still pretty damn hot.

Though she had long ago gotten over her schoolgirl crush on him, Spike still held a special place in her eyes, and him being near the top of the corporate ladder at Wolfram & Hart certainly did nothing to shake that. Whatever her sister or Giles thought of them, the company being evil didn't make the luxuries that came attached any less glamourous.

And she had chosen to place herself right in the middle of it all, to try to keep her sanity, in spite of being pulled in five directions at once, and perhaps most foolishly to keep an eye on Spike, and make sure he was alright, but without getting way too into him.

"We are not going to sodding Paris! It's poncy and pricey and full of bloody Frenchmen."

Spike appeared slightly calmed by venting his anger, and the atmosphere should have lost some of its tension, except that Harmony clearly didn't know how to handle him and threw a response straight back.

"We should so go there then! It's gotta be way more fun than killing people you actually like. That would kinda suck."

"Don't tempt me."

In an instant, Harmony changed tack, slowly leaning back a little on the table invitingly where she perched, spreading her arms further out either side of her, and taking on a sultry voice Dawn found hard to believe.

"I thought you liked me tempting you..."

Harmony, Dawn decided, either had no idea what she was doing, or far too much. Even Buffy had never been able to change Spike's mood that fast, him having gone from anger to lust in under two seconds, almost bounding over to her with fierce passion. Ok, that girl knew _exactly_ how to handle him. Maybe Harmony was really a genius, deep down... _Oh God, I'm going insane!_

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a flicker of movement, and peering closer she saw a book levitating above the table and slowly moving away from her, towards a big pile of boxes in the far corner. Knowing that she was about to lose her only lead, Dawn frantically scanned for suitable cover between her current hiding spot and the boxes in question, and found very little. Taking a deep breath, and hoping the undead underlings were distracted enough by the sight of Harmony's heaving bosom, Dawn took her chances and snuck across the floor, staying low and keeping to the shadows.

As she rounded the edge of the pile of boxes, she saw the open door behind them, and the figure disappearing through it and around the corner beyond. Dawn ran after him as fast as she could without letting her feet fall too heavily and cause too much noise, but luckily for her, she'd survived in Sunnydale for several years, so running was an area she excelled in. And, the other guy hardly had the look of an athlete, she caught up with him quickly enough, and copied a move she'd seen all the hot quarterbacks practice for hours, diving forwards and tackling Quonz to the floor.

She didn't think Sunnydale High FC had ever had to deal with his response, though, which was to roll and snap his fingers, a jewelled dagger appearing in his hands with a puff of blue smoke, followed by him muttering something about thanking the Heavens for cheap parlour tricks. Dawn jumped backwards as he swept the dagger towards her, trying to think how she would have responded to this sort of thing back home. Then she remembered!

"Hold it right there," she whispered fiercely, "or I'll scream."

Quonz's face broke into a terrible grin, and he suddenly looked a lot less dashing. _Well, sort of in a dangerous way, but..._ But the important thing was that he did stop, whispering back to her instead.

"You were just spying on the only people within earshot, and they didn't exactly look helpful."

Dawn stood her ground, ready to run but trying not to appear so, deciding to cross her arms and frown to attempt to look a little more intimidating. That, she had learned from far too many people.

"No, they looked more... hungry."

Almost automatically, her threat was accompanied by her eyebrow raising, and she thought Quonz looked slightly taken aback. Sounding a lot more confident than she felt, she continued.

"I mean, I'm cute, and the boss back there is in love with my sister," _he just doesn't know it yet_ , "and you, I think he'd call a ponce. And a thief," she added, glancing at the book Quonz held. He narrowed his eyes slightly, as if sizing her up, trying to decide if she really would risk crying out, and when he did respond his voice was still smooth, but the way he spun the dagger around in his hand gave her a chill.

"Well, I tell you what," he said, "you don't announce dinner service, and I won't leave them a filleted appetiser."

She nodded, not trusting herself to sound anything but meek if she responded aloud. Taking a deep breath, she forced her voice to stay even as she looked him in the eye and spoke.

"So, what's the grudge against Angel running Wolfram & Hart?"

Quonz narrowed his eyes a little, clearly deciding how to answer, and straightened his tie. It was at that point that Dawn realised he'd somehow managed to change his clothes, the Watchers Academy uniform was now nowhere to be seen, and he instead wore a sharp navy blue suit and slightly darker tie, over a pale shirt, with polished black leather shoes. Though she had plenty of experience with malignant demons, never before had Dawn encountered one who tried to screw them over with quite so much style.

"I'm just a small player in a big game," he told her with a wry, self-effacing smile.

Dawn wasn't sure if her expression was one of scepticism or worry, but he seemed to press his advantage, taking a step toward her and lowering his voice to a sinister whisper.

"Don't you feel it? That oppressive touch, the darkness staining the past? We are not the only forces changing history today."

"What do you mean?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Quonz looked around briefly, indicating the area surrounding them, as if he were studying the air itself.

"It's been gradually seeping through for years," he said solemnly, as if he himself were worried, "but it's getting stronger now by the day. Traces of a great misery yet to come, bleeding through the cracks in time."

Dawn fought down the fear in her gut, instead opting for scorn, pretending it was her only response and hiding her worry.

"And what's your job? Chief dramatist?"

He smiled, almost fondly, and Dawn wondered if she was really standing face to face with that rarest of adversaries, an enemy who could laugh at themselves, and not in a, you know, insane way.

"My employers want Angel and his friends out of the way," he responded, and he was not smiling now. Although his voice remained smooth, his eyes had lost all the warmth Dawn had seen only a second before.

"Awww, are you afraid we'll stop your evil plans?"

She had to listen closely to catch his reply, for it was only a soft murmur, as he absently looked off sideways, and Dawn wondered how good her chances were of jumping him and grabbing the dagger he held.

"More like your own are too much competition, that would be my guess."

"Great, thanks for that," she shot back. "And how will stealing books doom us all? Library fines?"

Quonz looked down to the book in his other hand, partially concealed behind his back.

"I think your blond friend might be rather lost without it."

"Oh right, the Gem of Amara thing. Heard about that one. From both sides."

She was formulating a plan while speaking, trying to work out how she could get the book away from him for long enough for it to work. _I wonder…_ Surreptitiously taking a deep breath, and hoping to God she knew what she was doing, Dawn screamed.

Quonz's eyes widened in surprise, but he recovered more quickly than she expected, lunging forwards, his ornate dagger arcing out toward her. Dawn spun sideways, raising her hand to grab the dagger's blade and steer it around her form, not through it, in the process slicing open her palm. As Quonz whipped around to face her again, and she heard the heavy footfalls of several vampires in the next room running towards them, she dove towards Quonz and jammed her hand into her pocket, closing her bloody fingers around the sangreal.

Quonz, already mid-way through lashing out with his dagger again, stumbled forwards when she disappeared, and failed to change direction quickly enough when she appeared again right behind him. Grabbing the book from his other hand, Dawn threw it down the corridor the way she had come, knowing Spike's minions would be coming that way any second, watching it spinning across the floor as she grasped the stone again and vanished.

* * *

 _Who is it this time?_ The thought was the first thing to enter Dawn's mind as the fog cleared. Although it wasn't all that long ago, for her, that she'd appeared on the streets of Gunn's corner of Los Angeles, and her knee still throbbed from that landing if she put too much weight on it, she felt as if she'd been away for months. The 'game', as he'd called it, had become clear – never the same time twice, never the same _person_ twice. She wondered whether this was a strategy, or just something else she couldn't come close to understanding about this whole time jumping concept. And what's more, she'd left Spike's warehouse before Quonz, and yet his tracks through the ripples were already there, fresh and easy to follow, as if he'd sauntered through just before her. She couldn't help feeling the concepts of 'before' and 'after' meant very little right now. Grimacing down at her cut palm, where a small trickle of blood was running down her wrist, she examined her surroundings, a hallway made of light coloured stone. Hanging over an archway were a set of off-white drapes, and, checking she was still alone, Dawn tore off a strip of material and bandaged her injured hand tightly, twisting awkwardly to tie a tight enough knot with one hand. The bandage did nothing for the throbbing pain, and she suspected it was none too clean either, but it at least prevented her dripping blood everywhere like a punctured paint can.

Her injury tended to as best as she could manage, she turned her attention to the building around her – lit weakly by flickering wall mounted torches, the corridor seemed old, the stone walls shabby and cracked, and the floor, made from large slabs of grey stone, was coated in a thin layer of dust that crunched underfoot.

 _A castle?_ She wondered. _Gotta be Europe, cos this doesn't look like Disneyland_. But who would be in Europe? She'd seen Spike's past, she'd seen Wesley's. That left only one person who spent a lot of time hanging around creepy old buildings in Europe. If this _was_ Angel's past, he hoped they hadn't gone back too far – she didn't fancy running into her boss in his heyday, Darla in tow. Reaching the end of the hallway, where it joined another, identical, in a T shape, she ducked behind a support as a man ran past, the brown habit of a monk billowing around him, clutching candles in his arms. She was badly hidden, but the monk seemed far too intent on reaching his destination to notice her. Something about 'monks' hit a little too close to home for Dawn, but she shook off a slight twinge of worry as she realised she could now hear shouting in the distance, down the hall after the monk. Suddenly a crash, like a clap of thunder, reverberated through the walls. The shouting turned to screams, and Dawn, making a snap decision _away from the screaming is good_ , turned to run after the monk. Skidding round a corner, she saw a flash of dull brown material disappear through double doors at the far end, as another crash shook the building. She heard the clunking of wood against metal, and assumed that a heavy lock had been rammed home on the double doors. Racing up to them, she pushed the door tentatively and sure enough it didn't budge.

"Only the parents allowed in the delivery room, I'm afraid."

Dawn jumped, her heart rate doubling in under a second. Irritated at herself and trying to hide her surprise, she turned to see Quonz, stepping casually from behind an archway. His smile had returned, and she couldn't help noticing how sinister it looked in the flickering candlelight, dressed in a black robe.

"Jeez, do you have to do the ninja bit?" She scolded. Quonz ignored her.

"You have no idea why you're here, do you?" he asked, gesturing to indicate the building around them.

"Should I?" Dawn asked guardedly.

"Don't you recognise your own birth?" He replied. "Of course, so few of us would." To Dawn, it seemed that the temperature had dropped about 30 degrees; although the air here was quite humid, her arms had goose pimples. Quonz seemed to immensely enjoy the effect he had.

"No hospital, no midwife, or anxious father pacing the room. But everyone goes through birth – yours is behind that door, right now."

Anger was swelling up in Dawn's mind, as if her own survival instinct had realised what was at stake and was building up for a fight.

"You're going to stop it." She said. It wasn't a question. The expression of triumph on his face told her she was right.

"You were a particular challenge, your path hard to alter," said Quonz. "After all, it is by far the shortest, and almost all under the Slayer's watchful gaze. As I hope is evident by now, I am not an idiot. Your sister had a habit of ruining even the best laid plans; the last thing I or my employers need is a Slayer with a vendetta. Simpler, then, to nip it in the bud now. No-one will be angry, no-one will mourn. Because no-one will remember."

Dawn felt a prickle of a tear in the corner of her eye and fought it back, furious at herself for taking his bait.

"Your form in this time is energy; shapeless, eternal, pure, and a particularly fetching shade of green." Quonz continued. "Even now the abomination known as Glory is looking for the Key. In a matter of minutes, the monks of this order will hide it the best way they know how. In you."

"If you stop them, she'll take it." Dawn said, hoping strongly that he would care the slightest bit if Glory tore apart dimensions. She stumbled on the pronoun 'it', but somehow she couldn't bring herself to use 'me' for whatever they were channelling behind those heavy oak doors.

"Oh, I'm not going to leave you lying around for any old insane hell god to find, I think you know enough of those already, don't you? I'm just going to change the rules of the hide-and-seek a little, put you somewhere else." He looked up and down her appraisingly, as if deciding on a price at auction. "Perhaps a book."

Dawn snapped. She launched herself at Quonz, directing every ounce of her anger towards destroying him, once and for all, and ending this right here in the monastery where she was 'born'. But with an almost casual wave of his hand he created a wall between them, visible only in the shimmer it gave the air. No room left to stop, Dawn ran straight into it and felt it throw her backwards with the force of a cannon. She had time to guess that all the power of her valiant effort had just been thrown back at her before she hit the solid doors with a resounding bang, and she fell to the ground, the wind knocked from her and her head spinning.

Pushing herself onto one elbow, Dawn put the other hand to the back of her head, pleased to feel no wetness but wincing at the beginnings of a lump already forming. Forcing her eyes to focus again, she looked up and saw that Quonz hadn't moved from the spot, his barrier spell now dissipated but his eyes the midnight black she had come to associate with powerful magic. His hair seemed to have become even darker, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood out from the skin, an unnaturally intense blue. He was muttering the incantation of a spell in a language Dawn didn't recognise, his lips barely moved but his voice echoed ominously around the corridor. She had the impression he wasn't really aware of her any longer – pulling herself to her feet, she kept low, below his fixed eye line and moved towards the opposite wall where a torch burned in its bracket.

Reaching the wall, she grabbed the torch from its fixing and, anger and frustration rising to boiling point inside her chest she swung it towards Quonz with a cry of rage. The impact was like hitting a stone statue – its force shook up her arms and snapped the torch from her grasp. She watched it fall as if in slow motion, and the edge of the flaming head brushed through a fold of the black robes as it fell. The material caught, and in a second, Quonz was almost completely engulfed in flame. Dawn staggered backwards, horrified at the sight but also glad that his concentration instantly broke, and in a rush like escaping air his spell dissolved. For what seemed like whole minutes, he was completely obscured by fire, but a blazing arm had risen, and a wind, dry and bitterly cold, whipped past Dawn and down the corridor towards the burning figure.

Raising the dust on the floor into a funnel, the wind swirled around the figure, extinguishing the flames in a flutter of apparently undamaged robes. Dawn could see the forceful blue of his eyes restored, his skin apparently untouched by the fire, but a new expression on his face, an anger she had not yet seen. She tried to dodge, but he was too fast – another wave of energy hit her and she lost her footing, rolling across the floor, protecting her already throbbing head with her arms. His eyes darkening again, he raised his hands and the heavy doors blasted open with a splintering of wood. From her position on the floor, Dawn saw three monks seated on the floor in a circle of candles. As the doors flew open, a flash of brilliant light came from the centre of the circle and shot upwards, disappearing through the ceiling, and leaving the room dark and oddly quiet, dust settling across the floor.

Feeling a surge of elated triumph, Dawn realised she had been successful – the silent fury on Quonz's face was confirmation enough. A crash, similar to that of the breaking door, shook the building, and she remembered who was on their way. _Probably don't want to stick around for the Glory v. Quonz after-show_ , she thought, and pulled the gemstone from her pocket – no need to cut herself now, she seemed to have no short supply of cuts and grazes – she disappeared into the rippling world of the sangreal.

* * *

It was raining, hard, and before she had been in the alleyway for a minute, Dawn was soaked through. Cold, too, all warmth she'd brought from the monastery quickly dissipated. Steadying herself from the after effects of arrival, she took note of her surroundings – a short alley between two buildings, the rain bouncing noisily off the metal lids of dustbins outside a dirty blue door. The buildings were smaller than LA, no steam rose from grates and she couldn't hear the sound of traffic. The place seemed to trigger a vague recognition, like viewing a familiar picture from an odd angle. Stepping out onto the street, she immediately understood why – above her the green lights of the Sun cinema gleamed through the rain, the white front advertising films to the empty street.

 _Welcome home Dawn_ , she thought to herself grimly. It had only been a couple of months since she'd left Sunnydale; it made sense that Quonz would come here to try and stop her going to LA – after all, without her in the picture, everything else he'd tried would work perfectly. _Or would it?_ She stopped herself before the paradoxes swam into her brain again – that road just led to confusion and relying on B-movie science. Glancing up at the cinema again, something caught her eye and the train of thought left her mind – unless the Sun was having a very retro week, Quonz wasn't after _her_ this time. All those came out when she was – _well, I guess I was negative 3_ , she thought with a speck of bitterness. She remembered being here, in Sunnydale, at this time – even remembered seeing one or two of those in the Sun with friends. But of course, she hadn't been really here. Buffy was an only child at the moment, still at High School with Willow and Xander, and sneaking out at night to see –

 _Angel_. _Duh_ , she thought, cross that she hadn't realised that at once. Angel was the target this time; and he must be the most important of all of them. If Angel was dusted here before he went to LA, Wolfram and Hart would be a very different entity now, and none of them would have wound up together.

Dawn was slightly at a loss where to go – her house – _Buffy's house_ , she corrected herself, the library, maybe go to Giles for advice? Then things began to settle in her head, like jigsaw pieces falling into place. A worryingly knot forming in her stomach, she made towards a young woman hurrying home along the street, pulling her coat around her to keep dry.

"Excuse me, can you tell me the date?" She called when still several feet away – she had lived here long enough to know people were suspicious of approaching figures in the dark.

"The date?" the woman replied vaguely, looking at Dawn as if she were a bit slow, "Er, sure, it's January 19th". She looked at Dawn, who was clearly waiting for more, and added in an even less sure voice "1998. Listen, I've got to-" she gestured the way she had been walking.

"Sure, thanks a lot." Dawn replied, trying for a cheery smile but pretty sure she just managed to come across even creepier, as the woman's pace hurried away from her. January 19th, 1998. Not a date she remembered with much fondness, if her fabricated memories of this time were accurate. The clocks in the window of the shop beside her showed nearly nine o'clock, in a matter of a few hours, something would happen which Buffy had gingerly explained to her about two years later, and Angel would lose his soul.

She took off at a run in the direction of Angel's apartment. She realised how close she had been when she had arrived – not five minutes from the dingy building where Angel rented a basement – this alone should have tipped her off sooner, she thought. She'd only wasted minutes, but ever since Quonz figured out she was following him at Gunn's hideout, he had been very quick to act on arriving in a new timeframe. And once again, despite the fact she had left the monastery before him, his tracks were already laid through the vortex ripples as if he had kicked aside dry leaves seconds before.

The rain seemed to have worsened as Dawn arrived at Angel's building – she stopped in the downpour to rest gingerly on her knees and catch her breath, water running relentlessly down her nose and blurring her vision. Her breathing slowed almost to normal, she stopped to pick up a piece of broken tree branch with a sharp end and went to the side of the building. Wiping the rain from her face, she slipped down into a recess which surrounded a small rectangular open window that looked as if it had been deliberately blackened. Through it, she saw a concrete walled basement, sparsely furnished but with what appeared to be art in cases dotted around. Although she had never been to Angel's basement before, the weapons hanging on the wall confirmed she had the right place.

She hadn't been waiting for more than ten minutes when she heard a key clumsily in a lock and peered in to see the door burst open and two figures enter – Angel, looking pretty much exactly as he had in the lobby before she'd left, and following him, Buffy. Momentarily, Dawn forgot all about Quonz, about Angel or Angelus, or even the relentless rain. Buffy looked so young – _younger than I am now_ , she realised. And there was a vulnerability about her that Dawn barely recognised. With so little experience behind her and so much still to come, her sister was someone she had forgotten she'd ever known; not a practiced Slayer, but a high school girl feeling the weight of duty very heavily indeed. Buffy winced, and seeing the bloodstain on the shoulder of her shirt brought Dawn back to the urgent reality. Angel stepped to look at the wound, briefly blocking Buffy from Dawn's view. Adjusting her position to get a better view, her attention was drawn to a van, dark coloured and badly dented, pulling up across the road under the awning of a late night convenience store. A man stepped down from the driver's seat and walked around to the back of the van. In the streetlight, he was unmistakable. Quonz once again wore the navy blue suit he had been wearing in the warehouse, but this time a long brown coat protected him from the rain. She straightened up, and he spotted her, stopping with his hand on the rear door handle of the van.

Dawn stepped out into the street. Although the rain beat relentlessly on the top of her head, she didn't move under the awning – to do so would bring her too close for comfort to a man she had set on fire not an hour before. But Quonz bore no marks at all – if anything, the flames seemed to have washed him clean – even in the dismal Californian rainstorm, he looked, she had to admit, pretty remarkable. _Great_ , she thought, annoyed, _he couldn't be green or slimy or something?_

"What's with the ride?" She asked, trying to control the shivers her frozen clothes sent down her back.

"Angel always loved a motor pool," Quonz replied, his self-confident grin returning, "this one comes with a surprise inside."

There was a crash from within the van, and the whole thing shook as if a creature had thrown itself against the inside wall. Dawn suddenly had a pretty good idea what the surprise was.

"You see tonight's an important night in the history of our hero," he continued, taking on the voice of a film narrator. "Tonight, one perfect moment will send him on a course to oblivion, and then, eventually, to Los Angeles. But I repeat myself. What happens here tonight will direct the course of Angel's life. My friend here, though, is intent on ruining the moment."

He banged on the door with his fist and the van rocked again, a roar from within cutting through the sound of falling water. Despite herself, Dawn had come closer – she stepped forward more deliberately now to avoid the water streaming off the end of the awning.

"You want to stop Angel losing his soul." She had to admit, as evil plans go, this one seemed fairly tame. But then, if Angelus never appeared tonight, then Angel would never go to hell, or likely break up with Buffy and leave town. Well, assuming they never, ever... She frowned. "I've thought of a flaw," she said.

His smile only widened. "Do you think Angel and Nina just play checkers in his penthouse suite?" He chuckled. "Tonight is more than just Buffy. It's a culmination of factors that lead to a perfect moment of happiness. Do you know how rare that is? It's not an any old night after take-out thing. Believe me, if tonight doesn't go as Angel is hoping it does right about now, he's facing a whole different future."

"He'll never go to Wolfram and Hart?"

"In about a month's time, young Ms Calendar is going to decide to tell Buffy about the fine print of Angel's curse. That will eventually pull them apart, sure, but too much has changed by that point. Angel never goes to LA, and the future you know never occurs."

"How do you-" Dawn started.

"How do I know? You think I wander through timelines changing little things here and there 'til what I want just happens by accident? I know _every_ consequence of every change I try to make. I can see 30, 40 different timelines running from this very spot, and every event along them all. Which one gets followed is up to what we do here."

"Not just a demon." It was a statement, not a question. Dawn thought back to Wesley's garbled description of the visitor in his office, and it clicked. "You're one of them, aren't you? A Guardian."

Quonz winked at her. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. "Freelancer, of course. Wasn't happy sitting around in a monastery on the astral plane smoothing over history every time a horsath demon or a mad Frenchman mucked with the timeline. So I went where the money was – private sector. Simply put, I sell history. Where the opportunity arises, I can slip in and alter the past to suit my employer's needs. And they would rather Angel stayed a lovesick puppy in this small town hellmouth."

Dawn was silent for a moment. The mention of what was to come over the next few months had forced the memory of Buffy returning home one night in uncontrollable tears, the discarded cross necklace at the bottom of the hall stairs, that phone call that Jenny had died.

Quonz had clearly sensed what she was thinking about, and he spoke more softly, no longer smiling. "Would it really be that terrible if Angelus doesn't emerge tonight? Not only do you save Angel a couple of millennia in a hell dimension, you prevent Buffy having to watch him murder her friends, and then run him through with a sword. You spare Jenny Calendar, you save Kendra, and Angel dispatches Drusilla not six months from now. Were things really _better_ the first time around?"

"Why do you even care what I think?" Dawn asked him, conscious that tears played behind her eyes – the memories of this time, even though she hadn't had a clue what Angel was, were thorny; pain, death, and loss on all sides. A part of her couldn't help but agree – it would be better for everybody if Buffy and Angel never got their moment of happiness.

Quonz was looking at her differently now – almost in the kind manner she had seen him act as 'Colin'.

"Because you've done what no-one's ever done before; beaten me at my own game, _repeatedly_. I thought your ever-thoughtful boss had sent you out of your depth, as he is prone to do with his troops, but I must admit, I was wrong. Rather than simply have you throw yet another spanner in the works on this occasion, I thought I would leave it up to you. My employers believe in rewarding success; you've earned this one. Inside this van is a gatecrasher who will make sure Angel keeps his soul, and everything else, to himself tonight. Whether the future you know is so wondrous that it's worth sacrificing that better world – is a choice I leave to you."

Dawn stood, stunned as Quonz turned and walked to the edge of the awning – the familiar rushing sound and spinning disorientation heralded the portal that he opened in the night air. As he approached it, he pulled a key from his pocket, and stepped into the portal with a flourish of his hand behind him. The portal vanished and at the same instant, there was the metallic click of a lock and the hazards flashed with a double mechanical bleep.

In the matter of a few seconds that it took the occupant to realise it's freedom and open the back door, Dawn's mind flooded with images, memories from the future that had already happened, but now mixed with pictures, as real as any of the others, of the world as it _could_ be. She still didn't know Angel all that well, but if there was one thing he loathed more than anything, it was the demon inside him. Would he sacrifice everything since to stop him getting out, given the chance? His part in everything Angel Investigations achieved in LA? His time with Cordelia, or Nina? His _son_?

The doors to the van flew open, and she stepped back involuntarily to avoid them. The vampire inside, dressed like a college kid but his face a snarling feral mask leapt out and rushed her. A second's contact, and then she was pushed aside, the vampire heading for the basement. But he reached only a couple of steps before he stumbled, and let out a final raw as he collapsed into dust. Dawn stood over the patch where the dust was rapidly lost to the pouring rain, and dropped the sharp branch in her hand to the floor. She stared across the road at Angel's building for some minutes, light just visible from the basement window. Biting her lip rather hard, she took out the sangreal and tossed it in her hand like a baseball. With a final glance across the road and a pang of sorrow for Buffy's lonely walk home tomorrow, she spun into a vortex of her own, and the roadway dissolved.

* * *

 _Normally, things have stopped spinning by now_. Dawn was still tracing a path through the vortex, but the sound had changed – where before the murmur of a thousand voices, the snippets of conversation and the flashes of familiar images had gone. In its place, a cacophony of natural sound, the whispers of forests and the howl of jungles. Not the slightest sign of human civilisation was visible as the years fell away around her. Wesley's words flew through her mind – _"he has access to Illyria's entire lifetime."_ It seemed he was now taking full advantage of that. Her pace quickened outside her control, she felt the sensation of tripping, falling forward, tumbling faster and faster until, with the echo of a terrifying roar, she was thrown out onto the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs.

On her knees and fighting to regain her breath, Dawn felt the ground beneath her hands, charred and rocky, warm to the touch. The air smelt of sulphur and stung in her nostrils. Pushing herself round to a sitting position, she took in the surroundings. Once, when she was still in elementary school, her parents had taken her and Buffy to Yellowstone. The scarred and discoloured steaming landscape had seemed like another world, but the landscape around her here was even more alien. The ground was black, the only vegetation straw yellow bushes, coarse and covered in thorns. Small hot pools bubbled, and in places steam rose from cracks in the rock. The sky overhead burned blood red.

Nothing seemed to be stirring nearby, which Dawn was very glad of – she had no wish to encounter anything that called this place home. The spot where she had emerged was at the foot of a rocky outcrop from a long cliff edge which stretched far as she could see. Away from the outcrop on her side was a desolate landscape all the way to the horizon, pitted with erupting geysers, and seemed unlikely to yield anything helpful. _At least before I fall into a volcano or something_.

Choosing the rock over the hard place, she picked her way along the edge of the outcrop and crouched so that she could see around it. Beyond the outcrop stood the most incredible structure Dawn had ever seen. 'Palace' seemed the only word for it, but there were no columns or ornate windows with balconies – it was huge and jet black, and it seemed to be a part of the ground around it as if it had sprouted up from the bedrock. Spires of obsidian shot upwards from the corners, and the entrance, large enough for thirty people to walk in shoulder to shoulder, was framed in shining blue, what appeared to be arches of pure sapphire.

Still, there was no sign of life. After crouching out of sight for whole minutes, Dawn summoned up the courage to slip out and jogged as quickly as her tired legs and aching knee would allow across the few hundred feet of open ground and landed in a recess in the palace wall. Moving along it until she reached the entrance arch, she ran her hand down the crystal of the sapphire. Even in this hell on Earth, perhaps especially here, the flawless stone was incredibly beautiful. Before she could talk herself out of it, she darted around the arch and she was inside, hurrying down a deserted hallway that could fit a cathedral without touching the sides, her footsteps echoing from the hexagonal stalactite design of the ceiling. Inside the design was the same – blue gemstone on obsidian and basalt structures.

The hallway seemed to lead to only one chamber, in which a huge stone plinth stood. Stepping into the chamber, the light shining through a hole in the ceiling let Dawn see the statue on the plinth. At its base, enormous taloned claws gripped the plinth, tentacles wrapping around them and around the body above them, towering up to an armoured torso and four great arms holding bladed weapons the size of houses. At the top a ferocious inhuman face glared down, crowned in horns and what seemed to be thousands of snakes. The overall effect was terrifying, and Dawn recognised the colossal creature from an engraving Wesley had shown her.

"Illyria." She'd spoken out loud, echoing in the chamber.

"In purest form." Another voice had spoken out of the darkness behind the statue. Dawn barely reacted - she was so on edge and alert that little would have shocked her. She was, however, acutely aware that she had nothing with which to defend herself against anything that was alive in this time. But from the shadows stepped someone who looked quite human – it was Quonz. But he was quite different than when he had left her in the Sunnydale street, not half an hour before from her perspective. He looked older, years older, and his shirtless torso was scarred and injured. Two particularly gruesome scars stood out, surrounding bulges under his skin as if he had pushed stones into the wounds. Dawn was taken aback.

"Don't worry though," he continued, his voice tired, more gravelly and cracked than it had been before. "She's not around. Not much is, anymore."

"What-" Dawn began. She wanted to know why this palace, this entire area, was completely devoid of the nightmarish monsters the trip here had conjured in her mind.

"Killed, by her own followers, at their great cost," he replied, not even waiting for her to finish the question. "Well, as 'killed' as an Old One could ever be, and even here, Illyria is among the eldest – she's trapped, in the Deeper Well, where she'll stay until-"

"Fred." Dawn finished the thought. She didn't want to hear a graphic description of Illyria's rebirth just now.

"Exactly."

"But when she comes back, she's just going to end up with Angel again." Dawn said, puzzled.

"Well you have succeeded, regrettably, in ensuring that the future of your friends plays out how it once did, they will inherit Wolfram and Hart and Illyria will be released as before. As a result, I've had to take a new measure – if I can't prevent it happening, I can at least make sure it goes according to the plan this time."

"The plan? You _want_ Illyria to raise her army and take over LA?"

"I want only the best for my god," he replied, smiling and gesturing towards the bulges beneath his skin. Suddenly, Dawn realised why they seemed familiar – Harmony had talked about some guy called Knox who had 'weird lumpy magic stuff shoved under his skin like body art'. He'd had something to do with Illyria infecting Fred, Harmony didn't seem all that clear on what.

"It wasn't easy in this time looking like this," he continued. "Human," he clarified when Dawn looked puzzled. "But a few little tricks with the timeline managed to convince them I was powerful enough for their club. It took a while and a little manipulation of exactly whose ancestors got eaten by slime demons, but I ended up the great Illyria's Qwa'ha Xhan, and unlike my predecessor, I am capable of a task as simple as preserving a sleeping army for a paltry billion years or so."

Dawn felt a rush of bravery. "You know, I've been pretty good at foiling your great evil schemes so far. Partly because you love telling me every intricate detail like you're about to cut me in half with a giant laser."

Quonz laughed. "Well, I will admit I prefer to give you a sporting chance, this job so rarely presents a challenge anymore, and I love seeing what you come up with. But this time I'm afraid you cannot destroy the army that sleeps in this palace. The spell of protection I placed over them is well beyond a human's power to break, even one of significant magical skill, and you have no more power than the trait you were born with."

The morsel of respect Quonz had gained in Dawn's eye after their last encounter vanished, and her anger returned – she knew he was trying to goad her and was annoyed she was letting him.

Pushing past him, she strode purposefully to the archway beyond the statue, and headed down a wide flight of stairs. Before her, a chamber stretched far into the distance, filled with rows and rows of still, silent figures – stone creatures, some humanoid, some not, but all armed to the teeth – _or with teeth_ , Dawn thought, as she looked out over the army before her. Only the front few rows were visible in the gloom, but the stone faces, staring unblinkingly forward, seemed to glare at her from their stationary posts, their eyes boring into her.

All too eager to turn away from them, she passed an obelisk in the centre of the entrance way like a speaker's podium to address the soldiers. Ornately carved snakes spilled from the top and spread across the floor at the base. On the top three jewels in pastel colours formed a triangle around a set of symbols Dawn didn't recognise. She stopped beside it and watched as Quonz came down the stairs. She hadn't noticed before, but he'd gained a pronounced limp – his left leg seemed stiff and immobile. Given the literal hell on Earth he had clearly survived for some time, his injuries were remarkably light; she didn't like her chances of making them any more significant by herself.

 _By herself_... The brainwave hit her so fast she almost laughed out loud, but stopped herself before she gave herself away. Quonz was still approaching, taking the stairs slowly and deliberately, and she positioned herself where she could feel the altar behind her as subtly as possible. The lower left jewel didn't move, neither did the right. _I hope this isn't some solve-the-riddle thing_ she thought. She'd got through High School math with a little help from Willow, but puzzles set by ancient god kings were a little tricky to solve, behind your back with one hand. She brushed her finger over the top jewel, and instantly, she felt it tremble a little.

She glanced down at her finger and saw the remnants of dried blood where she had touched it. She rolled her eyes inwardly. _Why's it always got to be blood with you people?_ She thought, and, with a pretext of leaning for support, she pressed her finger against the fang of one of the carved serpents. The healing cut opened again, she pressed her bloody finger to the top jewel, and it fell away into the altar. The ground shook slightly and the sides of the altar began to crumble. She jumped away to avoid the collapsing stone, and watched as brilliant rays of white light burst from the altar as if they'd pushed it open from within. The light beams cut through the murk and found the motionless warriors. As soon as the light struck their chests, the lifeless granite of their faces seemed to glow with life – with creaking joints, the creatures broke free from their positions and massed in the front of the stairs. Dawn had a bizarre image of costumed fans crushing against the front of a rock gig. But the noise was far from musical; a thousand terrifying voices raised in a primal roar.

Oh, great plan.

Shaking aside her own fear, she began to climb the stairs as fast as she could. Freed from their momentary daze, the hoard behind her followed her up. She passed Quonz in the middle of the stairs, his face a mask of horror - the most disarmed she'd ever seen him. Reaching the top of the stairs, she pulled out the sangreal and looked back. Quonz hadn't been quick enough to react to her Hail Mary, and his damaged leg was slowing down his escape – pressing her finger against the gemstone in her hand, Dawn felt the rushing nausea overwhelm her as she caught a glimpse of the army swarming over the spot where Quonz stood. Stumbling, she looked around. In the translucent ripples around her, now much subtler and less pronounced, only one path could be seen – her own. With no new tracks from Quonz to follow, she made a split decision and sprinted back the way she had come, as the world around her dissolved and the snippets of the passing centuries reached her again through the fading vortex.

* * *

 _Ugh. Not good_. She shuddered, feeling a little queasy from the vortex, opened her eyes and looked around. She was on a rooftop, dozens of storeys up, looking out over a city at night. Though she'd only lived there for a short time, she was pretty sure it was LA. And it was raining. Pouring in fact. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around her, hugging herself tightly and inwardly glad the rain couldn't exactly make her look any _worse_. At some point in history, she wished it could be something than other than pouring with rain or baking hot.

Thunder crashed behind her, and a screeching cry filled the night. Spinning around, she saw a big shape flying through the air, diving down to streak between the buildings. She ran over to the edge of the rooftop and leaned on the parapet, watching it pass her several storeys below. Whatever it was, it was big, scaled, and reminded her of something that escaped from the Hell dimension when she was on top of Glory's tower. If she hadn't known any better, she'd have called it a dragon, and she thought she almost caught a glimpse of a figure on its back.

Hard to believe though it seemed, the supposed dragon was only of relatively minor interest compared to the rest of the street below. It was dark, too dark, the street lamps seemed not to be working in that area, and, judging from the noises she could hear, that might have been a small mercy. There was movement down there though, it seemed that the whole street was crawling forwards, almost as if she were looking down on a running crowd. Almost.

For a split second, lightning lit up the sky, and though the street was still largely shadowed by buildings, Dawn saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of figures down there, all running down the street, little more than a dozen feet wide. The figures were all shapes and sizes, hissing, spitting, and yelling at the tops of their lungs as they ran. _No, not ran, charged_.

Amid the army, for that was all it could be, there were giants. Real, actual giants, reaching up nearly as high as the dragon flew, but not quite to the level of Dawn's rooftop, and they too were charging, albeit at a walk, massive weapons swinging in their fists. Several other exotically shaped creatures of differing sizes followed the dragon, coasting above the ground forces. It seemed stupid, but between growing up with Xander and her sister's campaign against the First, military terminology came to her pretty easily.

What she couldn't work out was the objective – why would a giant army of demons be in LA, and what were they charging at? An unpleasant feeling gnawed in her stomach. After all, had she not just released a demonic army herself? But then, if that army had vanquished the Earth, how come LA looked pretty much the same? Except for the dragon, at any rate. Despite several more flashes of lightning, she couldn't make out the end of the alley clearly, it seemed to hold just four figures, standing fast, waiting for the army to reach them. They all carried various weapons, but the only one she could distinguish for sure was the closest figure, raising a sword in front of him.

By chance, a lightning flash coincided with the first clash of sword on bone – the figure's sword, and the attacker's bone. The other three also leaped into the fray, tearing swathes through the enemy ranks still swarming toward them. The sickening din of violence and death filled the air, hidden only by the howls of a big group of wolves, pouring into the alley from a side street, and coming at the four defenders from a different angle.

Whatever happened when the wolves reached the swordsmen, she never found out, as at that moment, the dragon burst back into view, soaring up from beneath her, rushing over the parapet, and soaring close over the rooftop. Dawn quickly ducked down behind the wall, out of the way, and as the dragon passed overhead, the rider's head turned and looked her in the eye.

As if time were frozen, the image was one Dawn would not soon forget. The dragon was heading away from her, only its tail still overhead, and it had banked sharply left, revealing the figure on its back that she had glimpsed before. The rider wore a long, black dress, divided neatly to make riding possible, held back to reveal pale, thin but shapely legs, tipped with heavy black boots, like Spike's, but slightly more feminine. At the waist, she wore a thick, black leather belt, crisscrossed with silver that glinted in the light from the buildings, and from the left hand side hung a black scabbard, also inlaid with silver and encrusted with jewels.

On her head she wore a polished silver helmet with an ornate nose protector and feather-like designs beaten into the conical silver, from the bottom of which streaked long, brown hair. She wore matching armoured shoulder pads, a panel covering her back, and though Dawn could not see, likely one on her front as well, all held in place by black leather straps which shined in the rainwater. She brandished a sword aloft, as only a lady riding a dragon can; its blade seemed to emit a light of its own, and the pommel stone was a large sapphire of midnight blue.

But it was the rider's face that drew Dawn's attention. In spite of the nosepiece and windswept hair, she knew that face. Though perhaps a little older, a little more battle weary, and filled with a resolve she'd never have imagined, it was the face she saw in the mirror every morning.

And in that instant, Dawn felt the surge from the collapsing vortex pulling at her again, through the gemstone still clasped in her hand, and before she could even blink, she was gone.

* * *

The elevator doors slid aside and ejected Dawn into the bustle of the lobby. To her right, Harmony was arguing with someone on the phone, popping her gum as she did so. Through the glass wall panels, she could see Wesley, Angel and Gunn in a meeting. She strode over to her own desk and swung her bag onto the chair. Before she had even taken off her jacket, Wesley's head appeared round the door to Angel's office

"Ah, Dawn, good morning, could you join us when you've got a minute?"

"Sure, Wes" Dawn smiled back. The head disappeared back into the office. It had been three days since she returned from her interactive _This is Your Life_ , and she'd been asked to join the meeting every morning. She smiled sweetly at Harmony on her way to the door and she popped her gum grumpily back at her.

Wesley was flicking through a book as she entered. Angel looked slightly impatient, so she could safely assume he'd drifted into the book and not said anything for several minutes. At the sound of the door closing, He looked up and smiled at her.

"I've been researching the methods by which this Quonz fellow could travel through temporal disturbances, and I think I've made certain he can only do so when a particularly cataclysmic event gives him the opportunity," he said, clearly proud of his research results. Dawn didn't have the heart to tell him she'd kind of figured all that out already.

"Yeah, the ripply things were fading almost to nothing by the time I got back," Dawn replied. "He probably wouldn't have even had time to follow me back."

She shifted a little uncomfortably. Her account of her adventure to the others had been a little edited for family viewing, and among the things that hadn't made it into her sanitised version was the unleashing of an army of hellbeasts. And a young woman riding a dragon...

"Have you had medical give you a check over?" Angel said in a concerned voice. He'd asked this every time he'd seen her for three days.

"Yeah," Dawn lied. Except for the soreness in her knee, she was fine. It was the memories of what she had seen, not her injuries, that occupied her thoughts, especially that fleeting glimpse of what must have been the future. She had figured that in her billion year trip she had overshot her present day on her first attempt – just as she'd arrived in the past several years behind Quonz. But did that mean the future she'd seen was inevitable? Meant to be? Could she change it, or was she merely part of its past, like Angel and Buffy in that basement room, playing their part in history? The man most likely to be able to answer these questions was right there in the room, but for some reason, she hadn't told anyone about what she'd seen. Somehow, discussing that world made it real; while it was just still hers, she could pretend it was just a nausea induced vision, a hallucination born of too long in that vortex.

"So is Illyria's little time bomb going to do any more damage?" Gunn asked from his position perched on the back of the sofa. "'Cos she's been walking around looking smug since we found out about the whole 'ripples of time' thing."

Wesley smiled and answered, Dawn suspected he was reassuring he had researched it _very_ thoroughly, but she wasn't really listening anymore. She found herself staring at Gun's left eye – or more precisely, his eyebrow. She had an image in her mind now of him, a decade younger, carefree and wielding an axe, sporting a deep gash over his eye from a vampire's sword. Had he _always_ had that scar there?

* * *

6.04: A Fleeting Glimpse, of Angel: Still Falling, written by Monotone and Out For Bloody Summer, is original work copyright 2009. Please seek permission from the authors before distributing, and only do so on the condition that the original text and this notice are intact and no charge or fee of any description is levied for it. "Angel" and all related properties are trademarks of and copyright 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and David Greenwalt Productions. The authors are not connected in any way with the copyright owners. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by this non-commercial exercise. All characters and events depicted here are entirely fictitious, which is probably a good thing. Hope you enjoyed the show, all comments welcome, but please see the extended setup blog for our policies on replying. Join us next time for the last in the first release block of five episodes.


	6. 605: Silent Dawn

"It needs to be signed in blood."

"This isn't our first contract, Mr. Gunn."

"Of course, your Majesty"

" _Majestic_ Majesty"

"Majestic Majesty, of course, I'm very sorry. If you could just sign here..." Gunn indicated a spot on the long, very finely printed, contract before them on the table. Gunn, Angel, Spike and Coral were sitting at the conference table in Angel's office, and opposite sat a trio of demons, two smaller, plainly dressed aides flanking the composed figure of Kabal, the lord of the demon tribe of Henshi. He was adorned in jewels, silver and golden chains interwoven between brilliant green robes. The faces of all three were wrapped in thick layers of green cloth, revealing only brilliant yellow eyes set against dark mottled skin. The contract negotiations had taken weeks of Gunn's time, and the atmosphere was tense – the tribe were notoriously distrustful, prone to infighting, and Gunn wasn't at all sure the red stained pen would actually touch the paper.

Every action he took for the firm these days seemed to mean everything to him, every problem life or death. _Because they are_ , he thought, watching the blank stare of the demon lord across the table. _At least, he'd faced death - Fred's, and his own a hundred times - to keep his knowledge, his training._ What mattered now was making his devil's bargain count for every tiny victory he could manage. Somehow make it... worth it. He realised his fists were clenched so tight his palms hurt where his nails dug in. He tried to relax – this had been a long process, in no small part because the Henshi took so long over every decision. Kabal's hand was moving slowly towards the paper, now, his eyes still skimming the wording of the clauses they had slaved over. Gunn let himself breathe – he was going to sign.

In an instant, all was pandemonium. The glass wall of the office gave way with a resounding smash as a security guard was thrown through it. They all leapt up from the table, papers and chairs flying, all eyes on the body of the guard, the very definition of eviscerated. A deafening roar echoed from the lobby outside. Gunn had never understood what people meant when they said their blood ran cold, until that moment. The roar was tinged with pain, and the most primordial rage he had ever heard.

Before whatever made it could reach the jagged hole in the glass, he was moving, sprinting for the display of weapons behind Angel's desk. _God, this office is huge_ he thought, as he ran towards the far wall, grabbed an armful and ran back towards the conference room. The others had backed up against the window, Kabal cowering behind his aides. He threw weapons to Spike, Angel and Coral, and gripped an axe as he faced their foe. The demon that stood in the makeshift entrance was short, not much larger in stature than the aides cowering behind him, and dressed in shabby brown clothes that gave him a homeless shelter look. Across his chest and arms were slashes, as if from claws, or a knife. But these weren't anyone's focus, their attention on his face, contorted into a venomous snarl, his mouth wide and foaming, rows of teeth, looking sharpened, glistening. His eyes were wild, feral. Not a glimpse of compassion, nor hesitation.

He jumped, clearing the table in a bound, his hands, gnarled and pale, nails extended and bloodstained, reaching for Angel. Angel swung his broadsword, which the demon deflected easily, and sank his nails into Angel's flesh. _No, not his nails_ , Gunn realised, _his fingers_. He had buried his fingers into Angel, as the vampire yelled in pain. The demon, gripping with its hold, threw Angel over his head, towards the lobby wall, and whirled to face Coral. Batting aside her axe strike, he raised his hand to strike, as Spike swung his scimitar from behind.

The blade made contact, dug in, and the demon's hand was severed, spraying Coral and Spike with blood. The roar that followed was filled with raw anger, and the demon leapt into the air, kicking both Coral and Spike in opposite directions. Spike crashed into Gunn, bringing him to the floor. The demon, dripping blood and snarling viciously, was faced with Kabal's two aides, who ran, one in each direction, and disappeared out of the door. The demon lord himself faced the rabid animal before him, and let out a faint whimper as it threw itself at him, tearing at his flesh with nails and teeth, within seconds tearing him to pieces.

Before the body hit the floor, Angel and Spike were on their feet, charging towards the demon. Swinging their weapons together, they impacted, sending it spinning forwards. It smashed through the necro-tempered glass and out of the window, sending the two vampires scrabbling away from the unadulterated rays that poured through the hole. Gunn imagined he could hear the smash, whole seconds and 21 storeys later, as it hit the ground. He glanced around – Angel and Spike were squinting in the proximity to daylight, and Coral sat in the puddle of sunlight, her face a mask of horror. _And something else_ , Gunn thought. _Recognition_.

* * *

Still Falling Title Sequence, well worth watching, viewable here: Youtube URL / watch?v=ML5Bca1WxGE

The corridor was very long, stretching into the distance, but completely windowless. It was lit by fluorescent lights hanging in strips from the ceiling, and these gave the white walls and tiled floor a clinical, lifeless appearance. Coral's footsteps echoed eerily as she walked down the otherwise empty corridor. She wondered if the rooms behind the solid white doors could hear her heels hitting the tiles. She was dressed in white scrubs, almost camouflaged against the walls, swinging her ID card nervously round her finger, rehearsing arguments in her head.

She reached a set of double doors, bearing the label 'Briefing Room 3' on an embossed plastic sign. Pushing the door slightly open, she slipped through the gap into the darkened room. From her position at the back, she could see over rows of uniformed soldiers, sitting ruler straight in their chairs, to the raised podium at the front where an older man wearing the service dress uniform of a colonel was addressing the room. Behind him, projected on the wall was an image many would assume came from a Hollywood design studio. But to these soldiers it was very real, a demon, and their next target.

"Defences, besides being wicked strong, are present here in the spinal projection," the colonel was saying, indicating with a laser, "They contain a venom released as an aerosol, extremely toxic. Masks and full suits for this one, gentlemen." The soldiers exchanged the briefest of glances and scribbled on their pads. "We haven't observed much in the way of intelligent behaviour, so we're assuming they're animals," he continued. "Take out on sight. We've found their nest in a clearing about 3 clicks from the village, so expect an attack plan in the next couple of days. Questions?"

As Coral had come to expect, there were no questions. She couldn't remember a single one in the nearly two years she had been out here in the jungle with the elite army unit seated before her. She had always wondered early on if they had as many questions as she did, and just knew not to ask.

The colonel had paused only a fraction of a second, and now collected his papers purposefully. "As always, gentlemen, a reminder that this briefing is classified. Dismissed." The soldiers rose and filed out. One or two winked at Coral on the way past, out of the colonel's sight. As the door closed behind them, Coral moved forwards. "Get the lights would you, doctor?" the colonel asked, without turning around. She clicked on the switch beside her, squinting momentarily in the bright light. The room now resembled the corridor outside, another clinically white set of walls which could belong to an operating theatre. She walked slowly towards the front as the man before her busied himself with his briefing folders, still not facing her.

"Colonel Jasper, I wanted-" She started.

"Is it ready?" He interrupted, simply. She was taken aback.

"Sir?"

Jasper turned to her. His face wasn't the mask of the disciplinarian he used with his men, but she could tell he wasn't prepared to listen to her carefully prepared speeches. Suddenly, she felt like a schoolgirl, in the principal's office. When he spoke again, it was this tone that the colonel took.

"Doctor Bowman, you're here to try and convince me to test your serum – and I don't need a Nobel lecture on the topic – I need to know if it's ready to be effectively and safely deployed in the field."

"It can, sir, our latest tests-"

"Good. Then we'll include it in the tactical scenario." Again, the colonel interrupted. He nodded at Coral, and strode out of the side door, his file under his arm. She stood alone in the briefing room as the door swung closed. Nonplussed for just a second at the ease with which she'd made her case, she smiled triumphantly and strode out into the corridor.

* * *

"Do we even have security anymore?" Angel snapped, striding out of his office, rather redundantly opening the double doors, feet from the gaping hole in his wall. Gunn followed, and saw Harmony hurrying out from behind her desk where she had been hiding, looking scared, probably more of her boss' wrath than the demon's. "Well quite a few of them died the last time we got invaded, and half the evening shift quit after that mix-up with the blood and the cranberry juice, and we're still advertising for new guys, the ad's in this week's paper –oh."

Harmony stopped as Angel swung away from her desk, towards the hole in the wall. Gunn walked up behind him, and the two surveyed the scene before them, pieces of broken furniture bathed in morning sunlight scattered around the body of the demon lord Kabal. Spike, deftly avoiding the fatal beams, stepped out of the room, the glass fragments crunching under his heavy boots. He threw Gunn a sardonic look, patted his briefcase and said "Not to worry counsellor, think there's enough blood on the contract to count" as he walked past. Behind him Coral picked her way more carefully over the glass and leaned against the pillar in the lobby, apparently lost in thought. Gunn opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, then closed it. _She was just attacked by a demon psycho. That's 'what's wrong'_ he told himself. But still, he thought. She worked for the Initiative, she must be used to otherworldly dangers...

His train of thought was interrupted by the chime of the arriving elevator. Wesley hurried out into the lobby towards them, his face grave but curious. "What's going on here? I was just showing out the MacKenzies and a Xon'ta demon hit the pavement right outside the door – the negotiations took a downturn?" He surveyed the trashed conference room with shocked eyes. Gunn found himself rushing to defend his work on the contract "Hey, they were this far from signing," he said, gesturing with his fingers, "we got a crasher – seems some crazed hellspawn couldn't wait till the recess to tear us apart."

"Crazed?" Wesley repeated, his curiosity apparently aroused he turned from the scene of devastation to face Gunn. "But the Xon'ta are peaceful; thinkers, mediators, theologians. I've never heard of one attacking a human."

"How about two vampires and a lawyer?" Spike interrupted. "Didn't look too peaceable when it was tearin' up the clients."

"The Xon'ta did this? That's... I mean, that's unprecedented."

"Do they have teenagers?" Gunn asked.

"Hey!" Came an indignant voice from Dawn's desk behind Spike.

"We've seen this before, haven't we," Angel asked, "drugs driving demons crazy?"

"Well yes" Wesley conceded, "adrenal drugs which made them stronger and more aggressive, but then the only thing they cared about was getting more of the drug – this looks a lot more, erm, mindless."

"Looked pretty mind _ful_ to me, Wes, that thing took us apart and went straight for the client." Gunn said, "Someone using this drug to control an assassin?"

"It's more than just an adrenal drug." Coral said from the pillar. Everyone shot her a look and she added a little too hurriedly "I'd wager."

"How'd you figure that?" Gunn asked.

"Did you see that thing Charles? Just a bit of adrenal overproduction could never do that – it was psychotic. Something in that thing's system was making it crazy, like a rabid animal."

"Well we need to know what it was, there could be more of them somewhere and I want to find them before they do this to someone else," Angel instructed her, then glanced back into the room and added "and I'm gonna need something to tell the-" He glanced at Gunn who supplied the name, "Henshi", "-Henshi when they want to know what we did to their leader at a peace negotiation." Frustrated, Angel stormed back through his open doors, pulling them too behind him. Through the doors they heard him add "And someone clean up my conference room!"

The others looked at each other, and Coral, who, Gunn noticed, had regained her composure, spoke first "Right, I'd better get that body up to the lab." She paused. "Do we have coroners for demons?"

Wesley answered "Paranormal Embalming. Fourth floor."

She strode out and Gunn looked sideways at Wesley and spoke in a low voice "Just me, or is there something odd about her sometimes?"

Wesley was surveying the room, clearly not listening as he picked his way across the glass, and answered vaguely "Yes, quite right."

"It's just-" Gunn tried again "The way she looked at this zen-tar thing, I could have sworn... There's just something a little peculiar about her, all I'm sayin'."

"Yes" Wesley answered, still focused anywhere but on Gunn's misgivings, "Well if you like her, ask her out sometime."

Gunn rolled his eyes and strode off towards his office to compose a grovelling apology in Henshi tongue.

* * *

"Corrie!" the shout came across the crowded mess hall. Coral paused, feet from the doors. Just like every other day, she was clutching a sandwich and banana and bound for her office – she had never taken to eating with the boisterous soldiers, and preferred the view out of her office window. _The view_ , she always smiled inwardly, _a wall of trees and creeper dense enough to make it almost completely dark_. The young man who had called her bustled over, still wearing his labcoat, to the back of which was clinging a plastic sandwich wrapper, dragging along the floor. The soldiers seated along his route threw him amused glances as he stumbled through them to reach where Coral was waiting. He was slightly built with an untidy crop of dark hair and wore a flannel shirt of an unfortunate shade of puce. As he reached her, Coral carried on out of the door and he quickened his pace to catch up.

"Corrie, I need to talk to you." He started as they walked, Coral deliberately quickening her usual pace – she had a hunch what was coming and was hoping to head it off by arriving at her office. But he sped up himself, and pressed on "There are rumours flying that you went to see Jasper and he green lighted a field test."

"That was a classified briefing Bill, and we were alone in the room." Coral replied, slight irritation in her voice. He gave her a knowing look and shrugged. "It's a small base."

When she didn't elaborate, his demeanour became more serious. They'd reached her office door, and he swung around her to block the doorway.

"He did, didn't he? Jasper signed off on it? What the hell did you tell him?"

Coral paused before answering, realising Bill wasn't going to back down, and said "He just wanted to know if it was ready."

"And you told him it was? Are you insane?!" Bill replied, his voice getting louder; a passing soldier stared quizzically at them as he passed. Coral shot him a look that dared him to say something, and after he'd turned a corner, gestured to her office door.

"If we're gonna talk about this.."

Bill was hesitant – he'd clearly wanted to keep the conversation on his own terms, but Coral slipped past him and through the door, and he followed reluctantly.

Coral stopped short and Bill collided with her. He started to protest and then realised why she'd stopped. As the door clicked closed behind them, a figure rose from the nondescript metal chair in front of Coral's desk. He was quite old, and dressed simply, in a thigh length white tunic over white trousers, both bearing the signs of many months wear in tough conditions. Draped across his shoulder forming a sash across his torso was a bag, tough material with a striped pattern. This common native dress contrasted with his sun baked skin and the deep darkness of his eyes. Coral had seen his commanding figure before, talking with Jasper, and when she had visited the tribal village which sat a half hour's journey from the base.

"Dr. Bowman, I presume?" He spoke with a strong accent, his voice kindly but displaying a practiced gravitas, although with a hint of amusement which made Coral think the cliché was intentional. Overcoming her surprise at the visitor, she extended a hand. "Yes, ah, welcome to the sciences division-"

He shook her hand firmly, and answered the implied question. "I am Alunya, I am the speaker of my people in dealing with your colonel."

"Of course sir, this is-" Coral began.

"Bill Tamar, erm, doctor, erm, I work with Cor- Dr. Bowman." Bill interrupted her, swapping his armful of files awkwardly to the other arm and presenting his hand which Alunya shook, without a trace of ridicule. "Honoured," he said, "I hope your raised voices are not for some calamity?"

Coral cursed herself inwardly for even starting a conversation like that in the corridor. "Of course not," she replied, forcing what she hoped was a relaxing smile, "Just a- scientific disagreement. What can we do for you, sir?" She hurriedly changed the subject, hoping he wouldn't dwell on the subject of the argument. He paused for a second but seemed to sense her intent and continued.

"I have just come from Colonel Jasper's office. He tells me that you have come up with a way to finally rid us of the unclean beasts." He reached and took hold of Coral's hand again, clasping it as if addressing a close friend, his face sincere. "I felt compelled to pass on our thanks to you myself. You have our deepest gratitude, now and always, Doctor." Coral could feel her face flushing, and, painfully aware of Bill's disapproving glare behind her, she forced herself not to break eye contact and fished for something to say. Luckily Alunya didn't seem to be expecting a response.

He smiled warmly, and his eyes seemed to swim in the half light of the desk lamp. "My wife was killed outside our home six months ago," he went on, "I promised my daughter that day that we would find a way to clean our home of the scourge – you've helped me keep my word." He stopped, released Coral's hands slowly, his gaze never drifting from her face. The impulse to look away had left her, the jarring emotion had expelled the doubtful knot in her stomach that had been building since she left the lecture theatre that morning. _This is why we have to do this now_ , she thought. _The serum's ready. Ready enough. Because it_ has _to be._ The man in front of her, appearing somehow older now, more frail, smiled again and bowed slightly. "Thank you, Doctor." He said, and, nodding to Bill, finished "Doctor. I shall leave you both in peace,' so quietly it was almost a whisper, and walked out of the door.

The footsteps died away and silence returned to Coral's office. Slowly, Coral moved behind her desk, picking up a folder at random to shuffle through, hoping Bill would take the hint. Instead, he pushed the door closed and walked to the other side of the desk. Leaving it as long as she could, Coral looked up and caught his eye. Hard defiance stared back at her, an expression she'd never seen on his usually boyish face.

"It's not ready, Corrie, and you know it."

"It's performed fine in the tests." She snapped back.

"Tests? We've barely given it a pop quiz! Look, I know this is your baby, but I've never seen you like this – you're meticulous, fixated on every tiny detail, not brash and headstrong. You're _obsessed_ with getting this serum out in the field." Bill's voice had risen again, and Coral felt a surge of anger boiling inside her.

"Can you blame me? Just look at the stakes riding on this research!" Her anger and her conviction merged as she poured out her argument. "When I was meticulous, when I was boringly focused on every pathetic detail, I was safe in my poorly air conditioned lab in Boston – I've never, never seen research that actually _mattered_ before; not like this does. This serum could save families, the village, a hundred other villages, and it's completely _useless_ sitting in our testing lab. So forgive me if I'm a little – _obsessed_." She paused, and added, her voice suddenly much quieter, "Or did you miss the crying old man?"

Somehow, this last seemed to strike Bill even more than the emotive outburst. _He'd expected that bit_ , she thought, _probably practised the answer. But the old man had thrown him, too_.

"You didn't listen to a word he said, did you?" He asked. "He thinks you're his saviour, his daughter's salvation. He's clinging to a hope, any hope, and you just gave him a supersize portion. I only hope you can deliver."

"Jasper thinks we can. He wouldn't have ordered deployment if he didn't think it was going to work, you know how much he cares about his soldiers having every advantage." Coral replied. But even she knew it was a weak argument. Bill clearly agreed – his hollow laugh spoke volumes.

"Jasper's got a soft spot for Batman weapons and a soft spot for you. Not the best combination, in the circumstances. He believes it'll work because you told him it will."

"And it will. It's ready, Bill – it has to be."

"I hope to God you're right." Bill replied, and, shaking his head slightly, turned to the door and pulled it open. He shot Coral a ghost of his usual smile, and slipped out, leaving her listening to the sounds of the jungle through the glass.

* * *

Wolfram & Hart's newest intern shuffled her papers looking slightly nervous. Gunn smiled encouragingly at her from across the conference table. He realised that being Spike's secretary was probably a pretty relaxed position; after all, it seemed to give her free time for boundless research, even with Harmony's distractions, and attending an actual meeting in an actual – well, okay, trashed – conference room was probably a lot more stressful. The red stains on the carpet and the lingering smell probably weren't making it any easier. Spike was sitting next to Dawn twirling a pen between his fingers, dropping it regularly, and Illyria beside him sat motionless, blank gaze fixed in the middle distance. Gunn felt slightly unnerved – as common a sight as Illyria was becoming, combining Fred's familiar looks with her inescapably alien demeanour still gave him the creeps. He looked away, straight into Wesley's eyes, and in that moment recognised the same feelings. He was glad of an excuse to turn his head when the door slid aside to admit Coral, who slipped into a seat at the far end from the hastily boarded window, followed a few seconds later by Angel wearing his trademark scowl. But it was Coral's face which caught Gunn's attention; she clearly hadn't slept, and there was the faintest trace of a dark smear under her eye – _Has she been crying?_ His train of thought was interrupted by Angel, seating himself at the top of the table and spreading his hands impatiently to its opposite corners.

"What do we have?" he asked.

"I've analysed the blood I was able to, erm, take off the sidewalk," Coral began, her voice sounding tired, "There are traces of a pharmaceutical compound which appears to cause serious neurological effects. It attacks the neurones in the subject's brain, causing unbelievable pain and the triggering of the most primitive aggressive, destructive impulses even in creatures which were... pretty primitive to begin with." She tailed off, and Gunn soon realised he was the only one still looking at her – the bloodshot eyes probably signified nothing but overwork to the others – they weren't exactly unusual around this table, but he couldn't get the image of Coral's face after the attack out of his mind, or ignore niggling suspicions; still little more than gut instinct. He tried to dismiss them - Angel was speaking again.

"OK, so he was out of his mind. Why was he out of his mind _here_?"

"A targeted assault by an enemy," said Illyria. It wasn't a question or suggestion, but a conclusion.

"Maybe someone just pointed a loose cannon our way." Wesley suggested.

"Either way, be good to know if there are any _more_ cannons to point," Gunn said.

"Might be able to help you there, Charlie Boy" Spike replied, grinning smugly, "My glamorous assistant has been a bit of a bookworm."

"Dawn?" Angel's prompt was encouraging. Smiling nervously she pulled out a sheet from her pile of papers.

"I did some checking on incidents that have come in through our 911 tap and the psychics downstairs," she began, talking quickly even for her, "and I noticed there was a load of reports all centred round the same district, a big warehouse off East Mission Street. I figured it might just be a vamp nest or whatever, but then I heard one of the 911 calls, guy was a total nutjob, blamed it on the CIA, but sounded a lot like the same sort of thing that gutted your demon guy, all crazy and cut up and foaming at the mouth."

"Score one for my team," Spike grinned and twirled the pen again.

"And how, exactly, did _you_ contribute?" Angel asked, annoyed.

"We're gonna need to take this psycho out; figure our standard level of violence might not cut it" Gunn interrupted.

"There's nothing in the compound that makes the subject physically more resilient," said Coral from her end of the table, "But they probably don't feel any pain, or it's interpreted as positive signals by their brains."

"Sweet. Any chance this nest is 21 floors up?" Spike asked, glancing at the damaged window.

"Regardless, we're heading out at sundown," Angel said decisively, "Can't let it kill any more people."

"So we're hoping to tire it out by letting it kill _us_?" Spike

"Buffy used a rocket launcher one time," Dawn suggested brightly. Angel seemed to wince at the memory. "Yeah... I was there," he said.

"Didn't she shoot _you_ with a crossbow?" Spike asked, mock innocently, smirking at Angel's irritated expression.

"Bit of extra hardware might not be a bad plan," Gunn steered the two vampires back onto topic with a nod of the head to the gaping hole in the back wall of the office. The possibility of facing another of the creatures who had crashed through that glass wall wasn't an enticing one, but he could imagine the carnage it would be doing to an undefended city. "I'll see what I can rustle up."

* * *

A great cornfield stretched out before him beneath a midnight sky, and Angel span around in panic, looking for a way out, only to discover it went on for miles in every direction, six-foot plants extending as far as he could see. He stood in a clearing not more than a dozen feet across where the Earth was barren and poorly drained. The field was silent except for the continual rustle of the crops in the wind, giving the swaying effect of a rippling sea. This was not a friendly place.

He heard movement to his left only a second before a man burst into view, skidding to a halt as he came upon the clearing and saw Angel. He looked around wildly, clearly petrified, though Angel could barely make out his face in the darkness. The man began to take a cautious step closer, and suddenly burst into flames, screaming.

There came a sharp knocking, and Angel's eyes snapped open, the dream instantly forgotten. He was sitting in his high-backed desk chair, and must have dozed off for a few minutes. The lights were off, and he looked out at the sunset over Los Angeles, reflected in the mirror-finished office blocks that spread like glass and concrete mountains. It had felt almost nostalgic, brooding in the semi darkness on a problem they and their ever morally suspect corporation had not, for once, contributed to causing.

"Angel?" The voice, soft and friendly came from the door behind him. He turned and saw Nina standing silhouetted against the bright fluorescent lights of the lobby. "Figured I'd find you in the dark someplace," she said, a slight grin playing around her mouth. She walked over to the light switch and flicked it on. She gasped slightly at the wreckage of the conference room beyond the sliding doors as Angel slipped an arm around her. "What happened?!" she asked, looking up at him.

Angel ignored the question, sliding his hand down her upper arm affectionately. "Not that it isn't good to see you, but-" he started

"What am I doing here?" Nina anticipated, and blushed slightly, "Erm, Dawn called me. Seemed to think you might like a visit."

Angel smiled "She wasn't wrong." He saw Nina's eyes straying to the broadsword propped against the table, the throwing axes scattered on the chair. A faint wisp of worry crossed her face, and she sighed.

"I'm guessing you're about to rush off on a violent quest for truth, justice, and the American way, that it has something to do with your redecoration," She said, gesturing to take in the conference room, "That it's extremely dangerous and that you'll refuse to take one of your overpaid and underworked tactical units with you."

"I don't trust them, they're an unstable element in a dangerous situation," Angel replied. _What I mean is: I can't control them_ , he thought. _And they're a constant reminder of everything that's wrong with us being here._ They had tried to kill a small boy just a year ago, to complete their 'mission'. At _any_ cost. Justification for the 'greater good' was a subject only too close to home of late. _After all, aren't we 'changing the system from the inside'?_ Somehow, at this moment, this almost made him laugh out loud.

Nina turned to face him, touching him, close enough that he could have smelt her, even without his keen vampire senses, and she smiled. "Still the champion?" She asked.

"You don't actually get days off." He smiled back; somehow her touch, her scent, had calmed him. It was always easier with her, the damsel in distress he'd helped, and ended up getting the girl – a simple story, white knights and princesses, no ethical quagmire to cloud it. Except that ever present necessity to avoid getting _too_ content...

Not much chance of that, in this place.

Angel glanced over his shoulder at the skyline. The last glow was disappearing beneath the far buildings and it was night on the streets. _Time to go to work_ , he thought. He opened his mouth to say something reassuring to Nina, to explain why it was so damned important that he walked away from her again, but she shook her head slightly and winked. She slipped away from him, walked over to the desk, picked up the broadsword and handed it to him by the hilt. Grateful for the unspoken understanding, Angel seized the sword and pushed the axes into his belt. As he strode out of the office he was joined by Spike and Illyria from his right hand side, both similarly armed. They headed for the lifts, to meet Gunn on the parking level. _Hopefully he's managed to get us a real advantage_ , Angel thought as the doors closed.

"That's it?!" Spike was incredulous,

"When you said you could rustle up some hardware, Charles, I have to admit I was expecting something a bit more..." Wesley tailed off.

"Hard wearing?" Spike suggested.

"Hey!" Gunn snapped, indignantly.

He jumped down from the cab and surveyed the unimpressed faces before him. Behind him was his old truck, fully kitted out with wooden spears and stake gun, and sporting a new coat of gun metal grey. "Kept me and mine safe for years, got some of my best dustings on this baby." Gunn continued proudly, running his hand along the doorframe. If he was honest, he'd expected his secret weapon to slightly underwhelm the others, but having the old girl back in action made all the difference to him. He beamed at his audience and jumped back into the driver's seat. Angel selected a car from his motor pool lined up along the wall of the parking garage and Wesley and Illyria joined him. Spike gave a slight shrug and climbed into the passenger side of the truck cab, jamming a large axe on top of the dashboard. "Let's go, counsellor," he said grimly.

The Alhambra streets were dark – spotted only occasionally with feeble streetlamps – and empty. It was never exactly bustling here once the sun went down, and stories of a monster over and above the city's usual undead tourist trade wouldn't help. The only noise was the distant drone of the city, and the crunching of tires on grit as two vehicles crawled along, the occupants nervously scanning the buildings and alleys between them for signs of movement. In his mirror, Gunn could see Illyria in the car behind, stock still, her head cocked on one side – _listening_ , he thought.

The buildings here came right to the edge of the road, which was strewn with litter and industrial debris. Gunn's attention was caught by one of the large doors embedded in the brickwork of an abandoned looking warehouse, its windows broken and its painted sign neglected. The door was slightly ajar and he was sure he'd spotted a fleeting movement behind it. He touched the gas and drew the van alongside the gap, the view inside all but lost in shadows. He squinted into the darkness, where something shifted, when a pair of eyes suddenly lit up in the headlights of Angel's car.

"There!" Gunn yelled, at the same moment Spike shouted "I see it!"

"Nine o'clock," Gunn warned, and Spike snorted next to him.

"That's _three_ o'clock, genius, might have thrown that in with the contract law-"

Spike stopped, and in a moment of mutual realisation, their eyes met, horrified. Both looked out over the other's shoulder, and Gunn saw a figure crouching beside a dumpster not 10 feet from Spike's door. _Crouching? More like prowling, predatory, ready to strike_ , he thought.

"Oh... Bugger." Spike exclaimed.

A second later the surprise left them, and Gunn flung himself out of the driver's door and deftly clambered into the back of the truck, pulling the tarpaulin from the stake gun with well practiced precision. Spike grabbed his axe from the dashboard as the creature to his right hurried forward, and threw the cab door open violently, flooring the demon on impact. The momentary stalemate broken, the demon in the warehouse door charged out of the darkness, roaring as it came at them.

Angel and Wesley rushed to meet it, weapons at the ready, Illyria heading towards Spike.

"There's more than one of them!" Wesley shouted.

"Thanks English, got that." Gunn replied, swinging the mounted gun around and planting two stakes through the demon's chest, each the size of a fence post. The force of the blow threw it backwards against the warehouse door with a resounding clang, yet not a flicker of pain showed on its torn and blood-spattered face.

Spike was squaring up to his opponent now, gripping the axe tightly as the demon before him snarled, jerking its head manically between its challengers. Gunn tried to get a shot in to take it down but the dumpster and bent door of the cab blocked his firing line.

"Gunn!"

The call brought his attention back to Angel and Wesley, warily facing the demon he had staked which was, slowly but determinedly, clawing its way back to a standing position as they watched, incredulous. "Now that's just not _natural_ " he said, squeezing the trigger again. With a jolt and a tear of fatigued metal, the mechanism snapped, sending a recoiling steel wire flying over his shoulder and dropping the next stake onto the truck's roof with a clatter. _Damn, should've tested that_ , he thought, grabbing an axe of his own and vaulting the side of the truck.

As he charged towards the demon he caught a glimpse of a blond haired figure crashing to the ground hard to his left, a heavy axe skittering away across the tarmac. He raised his own weapon and swung, sensing Angel striking beside him with a broadsword. The demon grabbed both weapons and flung them high in the air, taking their owners with them before they thudded back to earth. Pain shot through Gunn's right side, and for a second he lay there, dazed. He saw Wesley hit the tarmac beside him, and glanced up, the enraged animal face glaring down at him, two wooden spears still protruding from his chest. Abruptly, amongst the pain a fragment of an idea formed. Before he'd even realised, he was yelling,

"Angel – pull," and reached up and grabbed the stake nearest to him. Angel, catching on quickly, wrapped an arm around the other. Seeing him take hold, Gunn pulled sideways with every ounce of his strength, and beside him he could feel Angel doing the same, in the opposite direction. With a sickening, wrenching sound the stakes tore free, leaving hideous gashes behind and torrents of blood, splashing Gunn's arm with warm scarlet. The shock registered for a second on the demon's face and then he fell, his eyes glazed before he hit the floor.

Gunn knelt, panting, wincing at the pain in his side and faintly nauseous from the smell of the demon's broken body. He willed himself to stand, pick up the axe, _help the others_. He reached for the axe handle on his uninjured side and his fingers closed around it. Pushing on it like a crutch he heaved himself to a standing position, just in time to see the head of the second demon roll to a stop a few paces away. He looked up, surprised, to see the demon's body still standing beside the truck and, comically superimposed from his perspective, Illyria's expressionless face where its head should have been. The body crumpled revealing her, standing feet apart, her sword shining in the headlights. Gunn was struck with the absurd notion that she looked very much like a movie poster and he began to laugh, relief washing over him. The others were picking themselves up too, dusting themselves down and nursing injuries.

He hobbled towards the truck and threw his axe into the back, about to reach for the cab door when Wesley shouted a warning. Before Gunn could react, he was hit from behind with the full force of a flying leap. Thrown forwards, arms trapped by the attacker on his back, his head smacked into the side of the truck. His skull seeming to explode with pain, Gunn dropped to the ground as his assailant tore away. The world was spinning, out of focus, and he barely registered the blurred figures all around him, the shouts, the clash of weapons. He felt the truck shake - had something else hit it? A new growl joined the din, deep and rhythmic, and now the truck was moving, its engine roaring as it gripped the road inches from Gunn's fingers and sped forwards. The world swam back into focus in time for him to hear a screech and a loud thud which seemed to silence the cacophony instantly. Head still throbbing, he propped himself onto an elbow and peered around. Angel and Wesley were hurrying towards him, and Spike was stepping down from the cab, a self-satisfied grin on his face. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his lighter, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke casually over the corpse of a third demon, impaled on one of the truck's sharpened beams.

"Not a rocket launcher," he called to Gunn, "But I see why you like her."

* * *

The Humvee rattled through the jungle path, tearing through creepers, trampling smaller plants and sending flocks of birds skyward. It wasn't yet light, and the brilliant white headlamps pierced the pre-dawn gloom before them, catching the eyes of a dozen small creatures which scuttled away into the trees. Coral sat in the back, gripping tightly onto a metal bar beneath the small window. On the other side sat Bill, who looked very queasy from the white-knuckle ride through dense jungle, and between them, two unloaded rifles clattered in their rack. Coral had always thought it strange that the Army would choose these things to get about in down here – the paths were worn by people, animals, the odd scooter; patently not for anything this wide or heavy.

This time, though, her thoughts were not on the ride. The team which had been sent to the village, carrying large quantities of her serum, had not made contact for nearly three hours. Scenarios flashed through her mind, but none seemed adequate. Even if the serum hadn't worked, these creatures weren't _that_ dangerous, not compared to some the teams had faced over the last couple of years. Anyway, she was certain the serum would have worked. Perhaps the team had chased the creatures away from the village and pursued them into the trees, forgetting to radio in their intentions. She pursed her lips as the vehicle jerked over another bump in the dirt road – she couldn't pretend that that was likely, even to herself. In the front seat, Colonel Jasper, dressed in fatigues in sharp contrast to his pressed and ironed appearance in the briefing room, was staring out of the side window, drumming his fingers on the doorframe. Coral found herself staring at the stylised eagle on his collar, and the way it caught the bouncing light when they went over a pothole, her mind elsewhere.

The journey seemed to go on forever, bumping along endless identical paths between indistinguishable walls of dense green, but eventually the Humvee broke through the tree line into a clearing. Outside the cover of the jungle the first rays of morning sun shone over the canopy, very bright in this part of the world, silhouetting the trees against a cloudless sky. Coral squinted into it as she stepped from the vehicle, shielding her eyes as they adjusted.

Still sure she couldn't see properly, she rubbed her eyes hard – what she'd seen as the glare diminished was impossible, it was fear, the remnants of the mental images from the ride through the darkness. She smiled, ready to laugh at her own paranoia, and opened her eyes again. The smile died on her lips. Before her the village was laid out in the clearing, and not a soul was moving. Smoke from the embers of a dozen fires wisped around the debris of collapsed roofs, torn shreds of tattered cloth fluttered like forlorn flags over broken fences and caved in walls, and everywhere she looked she could see people, still as in a photograph, their light coloured clothes coloured with deep red.

For what seemed like whole minutes, the four of them stood rooted, the impact of the macabre scene sinking in. For the first time in two years Coral realised there was complete silence all around her – not a bird, nor the call of an animal disturbed the eerie dawn. Even the rustle of the branches seemed muted, impossibly distant.

All of a sudden Jasper was moving, in his element, issuing orders – calling the base for medics to follow their route, sending the driver ahead to scout for the missing team, barking instructions into his radio handset. Coral found herself moving forwards, walking, then running, panic rising inside her. She sprinted into the village, hearing Bill behind her, calling her name. But she didn't stop, couldn't stop. The image of Alunya burned in her mind, his tearfully grateful eyes staring into hers as she ran between buildings, stumbling to check the people she passed. Dead, dead, dead. One alive, barely.

She was heading for the largest hut in the centre of the village, set inside a large circle of white stones. Her pre-assignment training course flashed into her mind – _unsecured environment, uncleared building, possible hostiles - find cover, wait for a fire team_. The drills had seemed so sensible, so proper then; after all, what business did a pharmacologist from Boston on the cusp of middle age have interfering in military matters? She felt a chill go down her spine – the irony wasn't lost on her, but an illogical impulse had taken hold of her – if she could find this one man, her one connection to these people, perhaps it would be OK, perhaps... he could forgive her.

She pulled aside the drape covering the entrance to Alunya's home and stepped inside. Sun poured through the damaged roof, creating a puddle of light on the floor. Coral walked into the room slowly, peering into the shadows around its edge. Suddenly, she slipped and fell hard on her knee, catching herself with an outstretched hand. The floor was wet, and as she held out her hand to the light she saw it was dripping with bright scarlet. A few feet from where she had landed she could make out the crumpled form of an old man, dressed in white, and clutching the pale form of a young girl, perfectly still, her hair matted with blood.

* * *

"It was him?" Gunn's voice broke her silence. Coral realised she'd trailed off, and looked up from her hands to meet his eyes. Where she'd expected shock, or an accusatory stare, she saw only compassion on his bruised face.

"It was him, his daughter too." She continued. "All told, there were twenty-three survivors when we arrived, it dropped to fourteen who actually recovered."

"Your soldiers?" Gunn asked.

"They were killed at the nest, only a few minutes after they used the serum. It drove the demons crazy, hyped their aggressiveness, their pain resilience, their- well, you know as well as anyone." Coral saw Gunn's reaction to the description – he'd seen _exactly_ what her handiwork did the night before. He'd cornered her on her way in this morning, and he knew. She couldn't explain how, or why the others hadn't picked up on it, but he knew, and somehow once she'd started telling the story, it had flowed out of her, facts, feelings, the moments that never made it into her reports. The young lawyer was a good listener, and she couldn't help feeling there was something in her story he understood, perhaps a story of his own beneath the façade – he _was_ the only lawyer she knew who'd be wearing that hoodie.

"After they took out the team, they turned on the village. Before, they'd carried off two, maybe three people when they attacked; always people alone, under cover of night. But with my serum, they were _insatiably_ violent. In a few short hours there just wasn't anyone left." She paused, and when she continued her voice was soft, quiet. "It was supposed to all but neutralise the demons, make them lethargic, sluggish, reduce their natural defences almost to nothing. Instead, I made animals into monsters."

"You made a mistake," Gunn started.

"That's what Jasper said." Coral interrupted. "That's what all the military types said. Couldn't have foreseen it, things go wrong, not your fault. Shame it doesn't really work that way, isn't it?" She asked. "Someone's almost always to blame for the worst things that happen, and in this case it was me. I wanted to be something I wasn't, a great research scientist, respected expert, hell, I had a whole village crowning me their saviour. It's a lot for a person to turn down, even when they know they should march right up to the boss and say 'I'm not good enough, I can't do this, I need more time'. I didn't do that, and a lot of people died."

This time it was Gunn who let the silence hang. When she looked up at him again he was staring out of the enormous windows over the city, lit by midday sun.

"Charles?" she ventured. His expression when he turned back to her spoke volumes.

"Got a pretty good idea what that feels like," he said, and became very engrossed in tearing corners from a memo. Coral understood an unspoken invitation to continue.

"The Army needed to assign blame, of course, and I was an obvious and willing target. Bill was quite happy to stand up and list every failing I'd ever made, and I can't say I blame him. Long story short," She started, smiling slightly at the expression; she'd been talking for over an hour, "I was dispatched to the lab of a deep cover civilian sub-contractor where the Army could deny my existence and I could deny... that morning."

"The Initiative." Gunn supplied. Coral nodded,

"LA branch. That is, until your in-house undead Billy Idol took the place apart." She smiled slightly to let him know she was joking. "By the sounds of this place though, I'm not the only one with a sordid tale to tell."

"Oh, you don't know the _half_ of it." Gunn said, flashing her a smile of his own.

"Do I get to hear _your_ half of it?" She asked kindly. Part of her didn't want to know - Charles seemed nice, friendly - perhaps his secrets were better buried. But in a bizarre way this was what was maddening: he shouldn't be friendly after _that_ story, after her mistakes followed her to his city. Either he hadn't been listening, or there was genuine understanding there. Gunn looked her in the eye for a second, and then looked away again, out across the skyscrapers.

"When I know how to tell it," he replied.

* * *

6.05: Silent Dawn, of Angel: Still Falling, written by Monotone and edited by Out For Bloody Summer, is original work copyright 2009. Please seek permission from the authors before distributing, and only do so on the condition that the original text and this notice are intact and no charge or fee of any description is levied for it. "Angel" and all related properties are trademarks of and copyright 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and David Greenwalt Productions. The authors are not connected in any way with the copyright owners. No copyright infringement is intended or implied by this non-commercial exercise. All characters and events depicted here are entirely fictitious, which is probably a good thing. Hope you enjoyed the show, all comments welcome, but please see the extended setup blog for our policies on replying. This episode is the last of our initial run of five - the next block will start being posted, well, as soon as it's ready! (which, if you've been paying attention since block 1 was first announced, should coincide with the televised _Angel: The 25th Anniversary Special_ ;-) ) Stay tuned!


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